Friday, January 29, 2010

Crunch!

An easy run today, one lap at Liberty with Carol. Since she has a 5K race tomorrow, we took it easy. I was grateful for that because as minimal as it sounds, my 20 mile week was a huge increase over last week's total of 5 miles, so I was a bit tired. My miles for the month of January did surpass my miles in December, so I accomplished something at least. We ran the whole park on the wood chip path which has been antagonizing us for the last few runs. It wasn't nearly as hard as it sometimes is, but I'm pretty sure that is because it's frozen (crunch, crunch, crunch) and unmoving. When spring and summer come it will be as loose as ever which will add the added difficulty that we both need (and dislike). 4.5 miles at 11:44mpm - definitely easier and slower than we have been running. I hope that Carol has the energy to really kick some butt in her age group tomorrow morning!

Thursday, January 28, 2010

auto-pilot (eventually)

Carol and I ran the Liberty route with two laps. We didn't want to do two laps, but tomorrow may be a red burn day, so we decided to tough it out to get the extra mileage. I was getting quite tired but finally my legs shifted into auto-pilot which made me feel like I didn't have to work quite as hard. We did 5.85 miles at an average pace of 11:02mpm. MUCH faster than it felt and much better than either of us expected. Yay!

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

need to get a groove...

Liberty run with Carol. She's been feeling under the weather lately, so we only did one lap (which was fine with me after yesterday's Sugarhouse run). We completed 4.5 miles with only three short walk breaks. Average pace 11mpm!

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

It's been so long that my running shoes almost turned to dust...

I haven't worked out - at all - for a week. I certainly haven't done the Sugarhouse route for a long time, so I figured I might as well torture myself all at once. It was tough, but I expected it to be. I didn't allow myself to walk on the hard parts, so I ran 11th-13th and up both hills in the park. (I walked immediately after....) Fairly pleased, though - 11:15mpm for 5.5 miles is not bad after a week-long hiatus!

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

stairs - boring!

We did the stairs because it was slick/rainy/weird weather today. 925 steps. It was boring, but they are getting easier.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Well, it wasn't raining when we STARTED our run...

Carol and I set out to do our Liberty route. About a block from work, we felt a very light sprinkle in addition to the 20mph winds. No biggie. At the end of the first mile, a rain/snow mix was pouring from the sky making the road slippery.

We abandoned our route to Liberty, but decided that we had to run at least 3 miles to make it even worth changing our clothes. So, we hit 5th East and ran down to 21st South trying (sometimes unsuccessfully) to jump all of the puddles along the way. We ran back to State St on 21st and north on State to the light at Westminster. That gave us just over the 3 miles that we were looking for, and we decided to be done. Of course, it stopped raining right then, but I'm convinced that if we had continued, it would have started again. In all, we did 3.18 very soggy miles @ 11:16mpm.

I started to get a head cold yesterday. This run really helped to clear out my head! However, I choose not to tell Bub about this wet little jaunt. Otherwise, I'll never hear the end of it. I'm off to get some hot chocolate now to warm up.

Friday, January 15, 2010

2-a-days?

It was a RED burn this morning. Yuck. So, we climbed 925 stairs. Yuckier.

THEN, the particles/million reduced enough that it suddenly became a YELLOW burn day. YELLOW!!!! Carol and I QUICKLY changed our clothes after my last meeting before lunch, and we were out the door!

We did one latp @ Liberty, so a total of 4.5 miles. We took more walk breaks than I did the other day, but finished IN LESS TIME! I thought that we would take longer because of the 925 stairs that we climbed this morning, and we both felt sluggish on the out, but who knew?!?!? There might just be an athlete in here somewhere! 4.5 miles @ 10:54mpm!

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Ouch! My pancreas!

Just kidding - little Pauly Shore reference there. Actually, OUCH! My quads! I ran from work to Libertyx1 and back to work. Carol didn't run with me as she had already gone home for the day. :( My quads are killing me from our stair workout yesterday, but I wanted to get the run in anyway. Since I knew that I was going to wimp out and only do one lap around the park, I decided that I would take very few walk breaks. I only took two. It paid off! Even though my quads were (are) sore and my legs felt like lead, my pace was 11mpm over the 4.5 miles! Yeah!

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

worst air quality in the nation! Red, Red, RED burn

So, more stairs for Carol and I. 30 flights of stairs at work. The first ten were faster than normal pace. The second four were done two stairs at a time. The last 16 were just doing whatever necessary to finish. We did 29 flights in less time than our most recent set of 25 flights! 30 flights in just one minute longer than our previous 25. Total: 1110 steps. That's good progress, I think.

Friday, January 8, 2010

OK to run when YELLOW burn?

What follows is an e-mail conversation with my doctor (who is also Bub's mom's doc, Bub's step-dad's doc, and used to be Bub's doc):

Dr. Hecht,
A couple of days ago, you told Dave that exercising outside on a RED burn day is like smoking a pack of cigarettes. I've been staying indoors on RED burn days, but what about YELLOW burn days? Is it still safe to run outside then?
Thanks,
Kaye


Response:
Dear Kaye.
Let everything else we need to balance the good and bad. I personally exercise on the yellow alert days outside but stay inside on red alert days.
It depends whether or not you like exercising indoors (I hate it ) so I take
the small risk of exercising outside.


Damn! One less excuse to use. :)

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

red burn again today.

Because it's another red burn day, Carol and I did 25 flights of 37 stairs for a total of 925 stairs in 22:17. This was 12 seconds faster than the last time we did stairs. Boring, but it does give the other muscles a workout.

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

off my butt!

This was my first run in over two weeks. I thought that I would stiffen up more than I did, but apparently, that will be tomorrow. Carol and I ran to Liberty, two laps, and back to work on our lunch break. It was a nice run. It was good to get out again. We did 5.85 miles @ 11:11mpm. Not bad.