Running in Columbus, GA

Today is a rest day for me… so nothing new there today. Here’s the latest on the technology front:

• Phones/PDA: I’m using a Blackberry 8300 to monitor my blackberry enterprise server, and I just switched from a Treo 700P to a Samsung Blackjack windows mobile smartphone to monitor my Windows Sync Enterprise Server. My experience with the Blackjack so far has been great. Email is pushed to the phone by the WSES. Not much difference between the blackberry and the blackjack in terms of which one gets the emails first. So I traded my Blackberry Curve for the 8300, and I traded my Palm Treo for the Blackjack.

• Twitter: I use Twitterberry on the blackberry and TinyTwitter on the blackjack. Both are good but Websense filtering interferes w/ the blackberry occasionally   . After a couple of days using TinyTwitter, I prefer it over Twitterberry.

• I’m using Twhirl on my laptop as a Twitter client. I use Summize search a lot- it comes in very handy to search for real-time event information.

I did my 13 mile run this morning, and it wasn’t pretty. Quite the opposite. I bonked at about 8 miles.

I haven’t bonked in ages, mostly because I pay attention to my diet, hydration, salt intake and so forth.  So I ran to work Friday morning, no big deal. I didn’t eat much that day, since I had to run home. I ran home at 6, and it was 85°… got home,  ate 2 bagels, and promptly  (yes, I’m Mr  Excitement) fell asleep.

For today’s run I woke up, didn’t eat, just grabbed my stuff and headed out. Felt great the first 2-4 miles. By mile 5, I knew I was going to bonk. At mile 8… wow.

So no big deal. I’ll eat and recover and be ready for Monday morning - I’ve got an 8 mile run w/ 4 miles at marathon pace. Actually still trying to figure out what my marathon pace should be for these workouts. My last one was right at 4 hours, so I guess I’ll try to do the training runs at 8:30 or so, which is 30 seconds per mile faster.

I told myself earlier this week that I’d run to and from work at least one day. The way it worked out, that day was today. I left the house at 6:30 am, got to work about 7:15am, and by the time I took a shower and changed, I was basically at my desk by 7:30. Very lucky to have a shower at work! Traffic wasn’t too bad at all. Basically the same route I run at 5am except that I peeled off and headed for my office. 4.25 miles.
Coming home was much more of an ordeal, mainly due to cars and the traffic. I went a different, more hilly route, and it was 84 degrees when I started. Ended up with right at 5 miles. I can probably get used to it; I’m checking the map tonight to see if some of the shortcuts I saw would actually work.

Anyway, just as I got close to my home I took this photo of the dam at Lake Heath. What I should have photographed was the patch of poison oak I ran through a few minutes later.

I was up and out the door this morning early enough to run 10 miles and be home by 6am to wake everyone up. Just an easy run.
My daughter called about 2pm today, while I was at work, to tell me that our German Shepherd had swallowed a pine cone or something and was racing around inside the house. I drove home and found Molly (the dog, not the daughter) in the hallway, panting, with a big pinecone stuck to the roof of her mouth. She likes to chew on pinecones… but this one, I guess, didn’t break apart. The pinecone was stuck to her teeth, so I tugged on it until it came loose.  Before I left, I filled her water bowl with fresh water and she was pretty happy about that sudden change in her circumstances.

Tomorrow is a scheduled rest day, but I feel like doing something. We’ll see what happens.

Yeah, I know. I’m running down Veteran’s Parkway at 5am counting every time my left foot hits the ground. Why? Because it’s still drilled into my head that 54 paces = 100 meters. And I had to do 10 ea 100 meter strides this morning. I think it worked. So a big shout out to the Fort Benning Land Navigation Committee.
Was just thinking tonight that I’m using an 18-week training plan. 18×7 = 126 (I hope). Subtract the rest days and I’ll run somewhere around 90 times between now and August 31st. Including some 10 mile runs on Monday mornings, 14 mile runs on Wednesday mornings, and of course the long runs on Saturday mornings. Do I have a goal for the marathon? Not really. My goal is to arrive at the starting line injury-free, finish in around 4 hours, and have a good time. That’s it.

This morning I started off slow, got to my 4 mile turnaround, headed back and started doing the strides at about mile 6. I put the details in my training log.

Coming soon: Why you should join the Columbus Road Runners if you run 1200+ miles a year.

Got to run on the Riverwalk Saturday morning, 12.1 miles, long run pace. The place was a ghost town. Aside from the usual 6AM crowd I didn’t see anyone else.

The construction on the Riverwalk will continue until March 2009. I looked at coming back and can see where people have just beaten the fence down to run/walk the 50 yds or whatever across the dirt. I usually just get to the barrier fence, run up the hill, then follow the railroad tracks for about 100 yds until I can connect back to the Riverwalk. It’s not that big of a deal. The only bad part is that if you’re heading south on the Riverwalk, there are absolutely no signs or warnings or anything- you just come to a fence.

Sunday, I decided to run to and from Below The Knee. Pretty easy, since I only live a couple of miles away. I’m going to try to commute to my sysadmin job during the week next week. That’s about 4 miles away from home. I think I can do it Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Monday and Wednesday are actually long run days for me according to my training plan. I do 8 miles Monday morning and 10 miles Wednesday morning. Should be fun… the streets are pretty damn deserted at 4:30 am.

I really enjoyed the Mizuno Run with US gait analysis yesterday. The analysis part was very interesting and the takeaway was that I need to wear neutral shoes. Which I already knew… but wanted affirmation. I’ve had some arch pain for a few months and thought that maybe my leg alignment might be messed up. Anyway, the recommended Mizuno shoes were the Wave Rider and the Wave Creation. I’ve run in both and liked both. I have a pair of Wave Riders now that I run in occasionally- they belonged to my son but he thought they were about 1/2 a size too large, so I inherited them.

My running partner, Jack, ran in Asics Kayanos a couple of years ago, then went through a series of motion control shoes after that. He’s had nothing but trouble. Yesterday he walked away with a recommendation for neutral shoes, so he’s getting some Wave Riders. So for him, the event really helped a lot. Kudos to the Columbus Road Runners and to Dr Ed Lopez for bringing the Mizuno Run with US operation to Columbus.

Oh-  and thanks to the Mizuno team, and the regional Mizuno shoe rep, for spending some time with us. The guys doing the analysis were obviously serious runners who really knew their business.

Did my 9 mile run in the morning, according to my schedule, sort of… so I guess now I’m officially doing morning runs instead of evening runs.

 The Mizuno fitting van will be at Below The Knee from 5-8

My scheduled workout: 7 miles including 10×100m strides.

Felt trapped all day at work, had to run some errands. Mailed 2 packages at the Post Office to my son.
So I was glad to leave at the end of the day, change into my stuff and go for a run. My route is 1.9 miles, a loop around a lake. First lap warm up, then start in with the strides. Ended up doing 10 of them per the workout and running a little farther, 7.6 miles, since I’m not good at doing math while running. I’m sure 7.6 miles instead of 7 won’t throw me off path.

Listened to 4 Feet Running & Running From the Reaper. I’ve got Trails & Tribulations scheduled for tomorrow’s run.

Also, my experience with Twitter so far has been extremely positive. If you haven’t tried it, you owe it to yourself to give it a shot. I use twhirl on my pc, Twitterberry on my blackberry, MoTwit on my (palm) Treo. I’ve been playing around a bit with Summize search, which searches all available Twitter conversations for key words and expressions. It came in handy on Sunday when I was working on a mail server.

The best part of the day: I was on the last quarter mile of my run, and I ran up the steep part of the levee, then across the top of the dam along the trail in the high grass. Sun was behind me. A long shadow of myself in front. Would’ve made an awesome photo. So tomorrow, Tuesday, I’m bringing the camera and hopefully I can get the shot I missed today.

I decided to use the Pfitzinger 55 18-week program (click here for a PDF of my ‘personalized’ plan) to train up for the Tupelo Marathon. Since the marathon is August 31, it’s almost exactly 18 weeks away. So I officially start that training on Monday. However, my plan say Monday is a rest day… which ain’t gonna work. So that is officially Change #1 to the plan, since I really need to run tomorrow.

I got the plan from Road To Boston.

I need to change my act and start running in the mornings. We’ll see how that works out!