Marketing Geniuses at the Cowtown Marathon

I had heard about these medals for the Cowtown Marathon, but my friend Charlie found an image of the designs and forwarded them to me a few days ago. Wow, does the "5-year Texas Star medal" look sharp!

http://www.cowtownmarathon.org/images/2009_Medals.pdf

I guess I will be running the Cowtown Half/Full/Ultra for the next five years. The Cowtown Marathon race directors are marketing geniuses ...

Half-Marathon Training Schedule

Finished up a 70-minute spin class (149 bpm avg hr) for my last workout until this weekend - planning to take tomorrow off for a home project.

Here are my "weekend" target distances for the next month and a half.  During each week, I plan to run 4-7 miles spread out across several days - brick runs after spin class or a few miles before swimming.  The end goal is to work my way up to 13.1 miles for the Lake Benbrook Half Marathon at the end of January.

• December 21 - 4 miles
  
• December 28 - 5 miles
  
• January 4 - 6 miles
  
• January 11 - 10K (maybe the Rotary Resolution Run in Addison)
  
• January 18 - Too Cold To Hold 15K
  
• January 25 - 7.5-8 miles
  
• January 31 - Benbrook Half!
  

We'll see if I can stick to this plan ...

Addicted to Caffeine? & Running Progress

Seasons Greetings!

Ugh, so busy with work and family activities pre-holiday.  Not enough time to blog regularly, but at least I've been able to keep up regular workouts for the most part.  Training log entries:

Mon, 12/8: Took the day off.  I deserved it after a solid weekend effort ... and plus I needed to get my car inspected (luckily, everything passed A-okay - my wallet exhaled a sigh of relief)

Tue, 12/9: Busy day at work.  I tried to get in a swim after work.  The first 500 yard set was at a slow but uneventful 10:55.  I got about 250 yards into the second set when I started to feel dizzy and nauseated so I had to stop.  It could have been a fluke thing, but upon reflection I realized that I might be suffering from cafffeine withdrawal! 

I've never been a big user of caffeinated drinks - I don't drink coffee for the most part.  So when I do use it, I feel its effects right away - those 1 or 2 gels with 25-40 mg of caffeine each feel great on race day. :-)  However, I have to admit that I fell into a routine of drinking one or two sodas a day (it seems to go along with meetings at work) and sometimes a gel with caffeine during spin class.  So today when I didn't have any intake, my body may have been rebelling.  Anyway, I'm going to track this closely and also gradually ramp down my daily caffeine intake until it is back to nearly zero.

Wed, 12/10: 55-min spin class (165 bpm avg hr - I was pushing hard!) followed by 2.5 miles on the treadmill in 20:42 (8:17/mi pace, 165 bpm avg hr).  My running is definitely improving - longer distances at faster paces.  And, better still, no pain in my shin post-run!

Thu, 12/11: 60-minute spin class (160 bpm avg hr)

Sat, 12/13: Double spin classes again with, like last Saturday, a quick run in the between them.  However, today, I was able to make it a 2.25 mile run (8:02/mi pace)  

Sun, 12/14: Another day of rest (well, to be honest, more of a day of errands than rest).  Christmas tree set up, some shopping completed, and major cleaning/organizing efforts going on at the Wang household ...

Mon, 12/15: 5K on the treadmill in 24:24 (7:52/mi pace, 154 bpm avg hr) ... Splits (and average heart rates):

• Mile 1: 8:07 (149 bpm)
• Mile 2: 7:56.5 (154 bpm)
• Mile 3: 7:41 (159 bpm)
• final 0.1 miles: 0:40 (169 bpm)

My overall heart rate looks (and felt) low for such a fast pace - under 160 for most of the run.  Definitely "A Good Thing" (TM).

After the run, a quick 1,000 yard swim in the pool (splits: 10:31, 10:35.5)

Tue, 12/16: 45-minute spin class (150 bpm avg hr).  The effort seems low after previous spin classes, maybe I just needed to take it easy.  Office life is stressful enough these days with end of the year project efforts.

Wed, 12/17: 3.5 mile run on the treadmill in 26:18 (7:31/mi pace)... Splits:

• Mile 1: 7:47.23 (156 bpm)
• Mile 2: 7:32.52 (168 bpm)
• Mile 3: 7:27.42 (171 bpm)
• final 0.5 miles: 3:31 (182 bpm)

and FYI my 5K split was 23:53 (half a minute faster than Monday).  High heart rates, but that was to be expected with the faster pace.  After the run, 60-minute spin class (154 bpm avg hr) - a bit lower than normal, but I needed the recovery.

As you can see, still pretty busy the last 10 days or so.  I hope I can keep it up over the holidays - especially continued progress on my running.  (Knock on wood: full recovery from injury is right around the corner!)

Motivating T-Shirt

The girl in front of me in spin class today was wearing a T-shirt with the classic Marines quote/slogan "Pain is Weakness Leaving the Body" on the back.  Love it!  And staring at those words helped get me through the last 20 minutes of cycling to complete over 2 hours (over 2:15, in fact) of a tough workout.

Stairmaster: 20 minutes (First 15 min at level 10; remainder at level 8) at 158 bpm average heart rate - "2.23 miles" distance / 267.7 calories burned

Rower:  15 minutes at 160 bpm avg hr - 3435 meters / 208 calories

Treadmill run: 1.5 miles in about 13 minutes (8:40/mi avg pace) at 166 bpm avg hr.  Getting better, stronger, and faster!

Spin class: 75 minutes at 159 bpm avg hr

Layla=Torture & The Road to Recovery

At the end of the 10:30 AM spin class this morning (the second of two), Patti, our instructor, had us finish to Layla.   A great song, but her plan also included us doing a LONG standing climb with interspersed "hovers" during the second movement ("piano coda") which is over 5 minutes in duration. Uggh!  By the end of the song, we were cursing our legs, Patti, and Eric Clapton himself. :-)

Anyway, today's torture session was necessary after slacking off Wednesday through Friday.  The week had started off well.  Sunday's workout was modeled after Thanksgiving's. It began with 30 minutes on the Stairmaster with the first 25 mins at Level 10 before backing down to Level 8 - stats: 165 floors, 3.48 miles, 415.6 calories (using weight 172 lbs), avg hr: 166+ bpm (started watch late), average pace: 89 steps/min, 831 cal/hr.  After some weight work, another go at the rower - stats: 10 minutes, 2256 meters (about the same pace as Thursday's 6-minute session), 83 calories, avg hr: 161 bpm.  And to top it all off, a 75-minute spin class (155 bpm avg heart rate).

I took Monday off to take care of some personal errands and to recover from the back-to-back weekend workouts.

Tuesday's workout wasn't as robust as I would have hoped.  Just a 45-minute spin session.  HOWEVER, I did run on the treadmill afterwards (6 MPH pace with a 5% incline) and completed an entire *0.5 miles* and had no pain in my shin the following day.  This is first time I have run since the DRC Half Marathon and the subsequent aggravation/worsening of the stress-fracture in my shin.  Woo-hoo!  The road to recovery has begun.

Unfortunately, after that small victory, crazy stuff at work intervened and made working out on Wednesday and Thursday impossible.  For Friday, there was no such excuse other than I just felt lazy.  Oh well.

So back to today ...  I did my now-normal Saturday morning routine of double-spin classes (duration/avg hr: 70 min/153 bpm and 65 min/153 bpm, respectively).  The one change from last week is that I did a 9-minute run in between the cycling sessions.  One whole mile on the treadmill!  Charts below:

In other news, I have all but signed up for the 21st Annual Lake Benbrook Half-Marathon - to be held January 31.  I know I have a long way to go before being able to do 13.1 miles, but I am confident that I can make it over the next 7 weeks.