Greetings

I'm taking a break from being a man of leisure, and getting back on my blogging. Wow, my reader is just packed full of goodness.

Friday I did my 3 miles, and Saturday I knocked down 6. That put me at a little over 20 for the week. Awesome.

I signed up to be in the Holiday Bootie Buster Challenge, even though I don't use the term 'bootie' too often. I decided to rip off Denise, and put my results in a blog as well. I've often seen people engage in these contests.. I figured, why not?




I went to Dick's and bought a foam roller to work on my IT band. Never used one before. Holy smokes. Wow. That puppy hurt. I think it's a good pain, but holy shit. I've been doing that a couple of days now, and I think my IT band is a bit looser, but my leg sure as hell feels sore deep down inside.

For those that may care, it's a 6" diameter, and it's 36" long. And it's one hell of an expensive piece of foam. Chuckle.

Monday, I did 3 miles at the gym. I also went out and bought new running sneakers. I'm totally stoked ready to try them out. They're my first pairs of real running sneaks. Before, I was just running in some cross trainers. I'll let you know how it goes.

Alright all.. Keep on rockin!

Repeal Day

BTW, happy Repeal Day, everyone!

Friday, Friday, Happy Friday

Greetings, all!

Today is a wonderful day!


Before I get to that, I'll say that I did do 4 miles last night. 2 on the treadmill, 2 on the track. My endurance is coming back slowly after giving blood a couple of weeks ago, but I felt really pretty decent during the run. I thought about going further, but decided against it. I'm going to stick to my plan, more or less. The plan for tonight is 3 miles, followed by 6 on Saturday.

As far as today goes....

Today is my last day of the year. Oh yea! You read that right. A mini-sabbatical. I come back to work on the 5th of January. So, that's a month away. I'm just stoked!

While away, I will do my best to follow your blogs and post some of my own entries, but... I may be bad at it. I do like to 'unplug' while on vacay, or on the weekend, so no promises.

No real plans, either. Just kind of hang out and unwind. I'm going to try to exercise Mon-Wed, Friday, and Saturday, and get into a routine of 5x a week. Assuming my legs are up for it, I'm up for it.

I'm also using the time to tone down my alcoholism habits. The time away from work seems like a good time to start. I haven't bought any beer for inside the house in a couple of weeks, and I've been finishing off open bottles of wine/margarita mix/etc in the fridge to remove temptation (and to make space, of course). I'm not going to give up beer or anything crazy like that, I'm just only going to have it while out, or at a friend's place, or whatever like that. That's my goal. It will cut me back, and it will be a healthier lifestyle anyway.

I should weigh myself and see if anything changes, too.

But yeah, not much planned. Some small small projects around the house. Maybe work on digitizing my music library some more. Going to drop my bike off for a tune up. Change the oil in the car. Nothing major. I'm supposed to do some painting, too, but I don't know if that will be occurring.

So.. I'll be checking in periodically, or at least try. If I don't talk to you, have a happy holiday(s) of your choosing, and keep on rockin!

TIART - Running Dreams and Wishes

Today's TIaRT topic is about running dreams and wishes.

I could take this in many many directions.

Personally, I wish that I could run every day, and be pain/injury free. I wish I was ready to run a marathon. I wish I was trained to be an iron man.
Those items, well, 2 of the 3, I can control myself, more or less. If I work at it, I can hopefully get there.

I wish I had extra hours in the day to run. I wish it was always the perfect running temperature out. I wish I could run every day with my running buddy.
These, well, they're just wishes. Fun to dream.

I wish that drivers were always considerate to runners. I wish the same that bikers, other pedestrians, dog owners, and others were considerate to runners.
These, again, just wishes. I'll do my part, and hopefully others will too.

I wish I had an iPod to run in the gym with. I wish I had tons of awesome running clothes.
These, they're just material things. They aren't important.


But, I could think about others, as well. I wish that others were able to run injury free. I wish that others could achieve their goals. These, the first one is a wish. The second, if people are putting in the time, most of their goals can be achieved


I guess my big wish would be that people can run. Run injury free. Run if they weren't able to run before. After that, I'm a firm believer that you can do most anything you put your mind to.

My big personal dream is to run a marathon. It would be a huge mark indicating how far I've come. From being un-athletic in general to running a marathon would be amazing.

Sigh. And right now, I guess my little wish would be that I didn't have things to do at work, and I could read blogs and write stuff all day. *chuckle*

Who's the best plumber now?

Tuesday I banged out 4 miles at the gym. 2 on the treadmill, 2 on the track. Pretty uneventful.

Wednesday was an off day, as I was installing this:



It's a condensation pump for a furnace. Very exciting. The old one was acting up, and I ordered a new one. I was a bit worried, as the exact model I had wasn't made any more. I made an educated guess, ordered a pump, and waited.

It arrived yesterday, and I wasted no time in installing it.

Attached it, hooked it up, fired up some tests with a full tank of water and.....

nothing.

Well, it ran, but the tank didn't empty.


Arghsighgruntbitchgroan.

After some more examination, I guessed that this was the problem:



It's part of the drainage hose, and it looked a bit crumpled.

Of course, the damn thing used to work.

So, I made the trip to Home Depot (thankfully, I only live just over a mile away), and got some new hose, put it in, and..



Who's the best cop now?!

All up and running.


Noticed a little bit of leakage around the hose this morning, but nothing substantial. I'll investigate that at some point.

OK. Keep on rockin'.

Hrms.. a schedule, perhaps?

In regards to my last post...


Found this schedule over at CoolRunning..

Looks like it would work for a Pocono marathon, and might actually be do-able.

Hrms...

I'm all re-upped

Went to the gym last night, and my month long membership had expired. Turns out they had a 'buy 1 month, get the next for half price' deal, so I'm all re-upped for 2 months, until Feb. 1st.

I ran 4.5 miles last night.. 3 on the treadmill, 1.5 on the track. Did some hip adduction/abduction, as well. I feel good today, and plan to go back tonight.



So, I fired up the ol' running log and saw that I have 483.36 miles in for the year. 125 runs. That's more mileage than last year, but I started in June of last year. I guess I'm disappointed. I know, what a turd I am.

The big difference that I see is that I cut out the long run. I did very few runs over 5 miles this year. I suppose this comes from my ITBS issues that I was battling primarily through May.

I was doing really well over the summer, bumping up the quantity of runs. I see in October and November I got a little lax.

I have mixed in some cross training, so it's not all lost. I've added some swimming and biking, but that really doesn't make up all of it. I've just become complacent.

I commented on someone's blog that I should really set some goals, or I'll be 'base building' forever.

My IT band has been better, but I'm not sure it's 100%. That being said, I'd still like to run a marathon.

I think from a personal schedule, I'll have the best chance of doing the training now and running a marathon in late May. But, I don't know that I'm at the mileage now to really do a marathon. I'm not doing 25-30 miles a week. I'm just not. Most weeks, I get between 16-20.

If I could choose an ideal schedule, I think I'd shoot for the Pocono marathon in May. If all goes well, and I keep up the training, I could do the Wineglass marathon in the fall. (isn't it great, not even one down, and I'm planning a second?)

There's also a sprint triathalon locally around July 4th, which should fit into the schedule. I'd like to try it, and should be able to grind through it, regardless of the marathon.

So, yeah. I need to figure out a plan. Is the marathon in May attainable? I can run 8-10 miles with no problems, typically, but I usually have to rest a day or two afterward. After a few weeks, the short runs cause my legs to tire as well. But, I can usually run short runs (3-4 miles) often (5x a week) if I don't do a long run.

In addition, I have the treadmill variable. Is running on the treadmill through March going to produce enough training for a marathon in May? Will switching to road running be too much of a shock to my body? (Especially the Pocono, as there are a lot of downhills).

Have to figure out a plan.