Freethinker ~ Freerunner

Easy 4 mile run today at a 7:52 pace.  

I wore the Brooks Ravenna 2's and my arches felt perfect.  

Brick workout with Kevin.  

Riding distance: 14.54 miles

Running distance: 2.18

I took the advice from a Runners World article on training for trail running and stood up plenty of times on the hills while on the bike.  I also looked at some weight and exercise ball exercises to target muscles specifically used on the trails.  To cap it off I'm going to try to get more actual trail runs in on my training.  Kevin and I are going to run Turkey Mountain this Sunday instead of our usual long run on the Creek Trail. 

On the injury front I'm still feeling good.  I think I'm 100% back, but I keep writing about it in my blog to remind me how easy it was get injured so that I won't do it again. 

Today Kevin and I ran the Turkey Mountain trails.  These are some tough trails, but we had an great work out.  It was really nice to change up the scenery and to get closer to nature.  It is good for mind and body to enhance your surrounding from time to time.  Especially when you are so used to running city traffic and highway noise.  I think I'm going to try to make it out there at least once a week, if not every other week leading up to the Grasslands and the Post Oak races.  

I ran for the second time this year with music.  I ran at a pace that felt challenging, but still easy.  It turned out to be at an 8:11 pace.  

This morning when I awoke the temperature was 16 degrees.  The weather man said it is our coldest morning of the season.  I decided to stay inside and run the tread mill for the first time since I got one.  It has sat in my house for about 3 months only having been used once by my wife.  This morning I gave it a go rather than go outside and face 16 degrees of old man winter.  

I rand one mile warm up followed by 8 400's at approximately 6:20 mile pace or about 1:34 each.  I then jogged about a quarter mile to cool down.  

I was about to leave the house for my run this morning when I noticed my Garmin was dead.  Luckily I have the Map My Run app for iPhone that I used as a backup.  

This morning I set out to run an easy 4.  It was a good day for my Garmin to be dead since I was not at all concerned about time.  But the few times I've had to rely on the apps make me realize how much I take the Garmin for granted.  There's simply nothing better than being able to look down at your wrist for distance, pace, and time.  

Pace: 8:34 per mile

It was nice and cool this morning at about 26 degrees.  The wind was almost non-existent so it was not too bad.  I probably could have had another layer though, as my forearms got a little cold on the last 5 miles.  

I felt good physically and no sense of injury in either foot, although my left foot seems to have a few lagging pains as I walk around my house this morning.  I feel a little soreness where my toes flex back as I walk, but I think it is just the normal after long run soreness that sometimes occurs.  

I was going to run an easy 6 today.  I probably should not have taken my head phones since my trance playlist gave me the mental boost to turn an easy six into a fast 8.  I really enjoyed my run today!  Really.  

I was running down a trail I'm very familiar with and feeling so at one with the universe.  I actually closed my eyes for several seconds several times to see how confident I was in my awareness of my body moving along in space and time.  I remember looking up at the barely visible sun behind the passing thick cloud cover feeling as if my experience, and indeed my whole life could be seen as having lived out in the blink of an eye.  I was pondering how I might look to some ancient alien race from the other side of the galaxy which had some way to witness the evolution of life on Earth.  My run today, indeed my entire life would appear to span but a brief moment in time.  It would be comparable to a human studying a mayfly, which depending on species lives a length of time anywhere from 30 minutes to one day.  For us humans who live an average of 76 years, thinking about coming into existence and then dieing off in as little as one day seems unfathomable.  Perhaps if there is life beyond Earth that has evolved longer life spans by orders of magnitude than that of a human life, it would see us live out our entire lives as we see the mayfly live out its entire life.  Even human societies and empires would rise and fall in the blink of an eye.  

Yeah, I did a lot of deep thinking today as I ran.  It was such an amazing feeling that I had to take some time to describe it here.  

It rained on me this morning.   The temperature was real nice at 58 degrees.  We must have had a warm front come through, since yesterday at 11:00 AM it was about 45 degrees.  So I left the house in warm weather running gear, shorts and short sleeves, no hat.  About 2 minutes into the run it began to poor on me.  I said to myself I should have taken my hat.  I did have a nice and easy run though. 

I am now 3 miles closer to my one thousand miles for the year.  Since I'm not directly training for anything in particular right now I decided to plan out my runs to make sure I would hit the thousand mark before the end of 2011.  It worked out pretty well by pure chance given the 8 weeks I took off this summer for injury.  

I got up at 5:30 this morning to go running at 6:00.  That would have been totally fine had I been able to fall asleep at 10:00 as planned instead of sometime after 11:00.  I've been reading Dave Ramsey's 'Total Money Makeover,' and I've been a little excited about the concepts to say the least.  

I'm looking forward to a rest day tomorrow.  

Kevin and I ran an easy 10 at an 8:17 miles pace today in 32 degree calm conditions before sun rise.  It was a good Sunday morning run as usual.  The blue sky and beautiful pink cirrus clouds that emerged in the east just as we were finishing was a sight to behold.  

I ran 8 miles today at a 7:46 pace.  I'm glad I got the run out of the way early.  This is going to be one of those days where the high is at 6 AM and it's only going to get colder from here.  It was a nice 48 degrees this morning.  

I ran an easy 4 this morning at an 8:35 mile pace.  

Just outside my neighborhood entrance I found an empty bag of deer feed.  When I first passed it I thought maybe it was a full bag.  When I went to pick it up I realized it was just trash.  So I ran home with it to throw it away.  Luckily I was only about 3 blocks from my house.  

I am now well on my way to hitting 1,000 miles for the year.  I only have 32 miles to go.  I'm a little short of last year since last year I ran 1,387 miles.  Damn that injury that wiped out my only planned marathon of the year.  I can always look forward to setting a new bench mark in 2012. 

I ran a nice 6.43 miles today at an easy 8:13 mile pace.  I had only intended to run 5 today, but I was feeling pretty good.  It's funny how that tends to happen on days that I don't have to work.  Today is one of my last vacation days of the year, and I'm really excited to be at the start of my 3 day holiday weekend.

My next run will be my usual Sunday morning easy 10, which just happens to fall on Christmas this year.  I have made a tradition with my self of running long runs on the big holidays such as Christmas, the Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, Labor day, and Memorial Day.  Even though I'm not one to go out and get sloshed on New Years Eve, in fact I'm pretty sure I've spent the last few totally sober, I've yet to do a long run on New Years Day for some reason.  I know that on New Years Eve 2009 Alisha and I ran the Race Into The New Year run, which is a 5k that begins at 11:45 PM so that you literally are running from one year into the next.  That would explain my lack of running on New Years Day 2010, but I'm not sure why I skipped out on New Years Day 2011.  I may have to add that holiday to my list of traditional holiday runs for 2012.   

My tradition of running solo runs on holidays continues.  This is now the second year in a row I have run 10 miles on Christmas day.  Last year on Christmas day I ran 10 miles at an 8:07 pace.  Today I rand 10 miles at an 8:00 minute pace.  Last year the temperature was 32 degrees.  This year the temperature was 28 degrees.  Last year I started my run at 6:34 AM.  This morning I started my run at 4:36 AM.  If I was into numerology and other such pseudoscience junk I might try to ascribe some meaning those two start times.  But since I am a rationalist I will leave it to the random noise that it is.   

Why such and early start time this year?  Although Ty was here last year, he was only three months old and still sleeping quite a bit.  Now that he is older he is an early riser like his daddy, and he is walking.  So although this was not his first Christmas, it was the first one in which he could really enjoy the experience.  I wanted to make sure to get my morning run in without missing his moment walking into the room and seeing the presents under the tree for the first time.  

Alisha and I calculated that based on his normal sleep patterns there was 90% chance he would not wake at least until 6:00.  I decided that in order to get my 10 miles in and still be back by then I would need to leave by 4:40 at the latest.  This most likely would have been successful but he went to bed not feeling well.  He has had a reaction to his latest round of vaccinations just having been administered a few days ago, and thus ended up waking at 5:30.  We thought that the busy day would counter act any early waking, but it did not.  Fortunately he did not make too much of a fuss until right about the time I walked in the door.  

I think this makes my record earliest time ever starting a run.  As I type this it is 9:00 PM.  I am sipping a glass of wine looking forward to bed after a long day at the in-laws.

Merry Christmas!

This morning the temperature was 31, but the wind chill was 24.  Fortunately most of my run was shielded from the wind.  I averaged a 7:47 mile pace.  I am now only 7.59 miles away from hitting the 1,000 mile mark on the year.  Since I'm going to run 5 tomorrow and 5 on Friday I will hit it during the my last run of the year.  

I ran an easy 5 this morning.  It was pretty cold at 26 degrees.  This Friday will be my last run this year.  I think I might take a week off after that. 

I signed up for the Post Oak Lodge Troad run in February.  I missed it last year, so I'm looking forward to running it again.  

This morning I woke up and put my cold weather clothes on that I had laid out the night before as usual.  Then I checked the temperature.  It was 48 degrees with no wind.  The forecast at 10 PM last night said it would be 42 degrees this morning.  I had planned an easy run and it has been in the 20's all week, so when I woke up and it was 48 I realized I was going to cook unless I switched to something lighter.  It never ceases to amaze me how dramatically unpredictable our weather is around here.

This was my last run of 2011.  I'm now closing out the year with 1002.44 miles.  This is below my benchmark year in 2010 of 1,387.72.  Perhaps I will top 2010 in 2012.