Tag Archive for tempo run

Multiple Titles

November 3, 2005 planet3rry No comments

As I was running today, I though of a number of titles that might be suitable for today's entry. It could have been titled “Flu and Tetanus” or “Fatigued” or something else. I started today getting two shots, one shot was the Flu shot and the other was my Tetanus Shot which I was over due. SO now I type with two mildly sore shoulders.

During today's run I could really feel the fatigue of the past few days exercising in my legs. They felt like lead weights as I tried to complete a 4 mile jaunt. The first and last miles were actually the best of them and they have the most traffic and obstacles to avoid, plus the big hill at the end makes it a tough mile. I decided that tomorrow will be a total rest day to let my body catch back up. I'll fore go the swimming and take the day off… maybe I'll have lunch with the guys. Who knows.

Split Split Distance Overall Distance Split Time Split Pace Overall Time Overall Pace Comments
1 1.0 1.0 7:38 - 7:38 - &nbsp
2 1.0 2.0 8:19 - 15:57 7:57 I couldn't believe that it was this slow, My legs were like lead weights
3 1.0 3.0 8:22 - 24:19 8:06 I knew this was slower, but I felt slightly better than Mile 2, but the time didn't show it
4 1.0 4.0 8:03 - 32:22 8:05 I didn't see this one coming… I killed it without trying. I must of had a quicker recovery at the top of the hill than in the past

Now that I am in Super-Secret-Marathon Training, I'll have to commit to running Saturday morning. Maybe 6-8 miles. I found out earlier this week that Jennifer is going to hold a Mary Kay event down in Chattanooga on the 12th. Like the good runner that I am, the first thing that came to my mind was “I wonder if there are any local races” and Praise be [insert your deity of choice, if any]!!! There was… a small race called the Chickamauga Marathon. Accompanying the marathon is a 10 miler. I did think for about 30 seconds, okay make it a minute… that I would do the marathon with little to no training. Okay, make that no training, but it's not like I have not done that before. Rewind to February 2002, I was in Lake Charles, LA for a project and we went to New Orleans for the Mardi Gras Marathon. I ran the full marathon and Tom ran the half-marathon. I could not justify NOT running the marathon when I had the chance, even though, I had only run 40 miles the past 6 weeks and 13 of those miles was a half marathon I ran the weekend before.

Chickamauga is only 1-1/2 hours away, so if I wanted to do it next year, I could make it a day trip, so I am running the 10 miler else I would be suffering through that 26.2 miles to get the state of Georgia checked off on my 50 State map.


Life In General , ,

Dehydrated and Chaffed

November 2, 2005 planet3rry No comments

Today was just about as beautiful as you can get. The billboard on Thomspon Boling Arena said 61 degrees when I ran by it today and with the sun shining, it was very relaxing. I made the normal out and back 5 mile course just to keep on track. You'll be able to tell from my split times that the previous workouts took a toll on me on today. Another reason why I Think that my times were sub-par today is that I was dehydrated and I actually knew this before working out. [start gross topic]I noticed a couple of days ago that my pee was about the color of the sun, bright bright yellow. In fact, Crayola called me and said they'd make a 'Whiz Yellow' on my behalf. Regardless, the fact of matter that that is a big sign that I am dehydrated.[end gross topic] So what do I do? Fill up on Costa Rican and Mexican coffee, diet soft drinks and some more coffee. Man, that does a body good! I did make a feeble attempt while walking to workout to drink about 16oz of water before the workout. I was parched the entire run but I never stopped at the water fountain to try to rehydrate during my run. Go Figure, must be my lack of street smartz.

And to make matters worse, my new running shorts, the ones with the 2″ inseam(I think boxer briefs have more fabric then these things) left my inner thighs exposed and thus I experienced some chaffing… Yowser. I have never had chaffing and never had to put on Body Glide or worry about things like that despite my, uh-um abundance, in the thigh department. Yeah, I've had my share of bloodied nipples but rarely any chaffing. So, the red shorts are retired for the winter and won't be back until spring time, maybe for a 5k or something.

I had my new mp3 player (will try to get the specs on it) keeping me motivated while I was running and maybe that is what helped with the whole dehydration (by the way, I am drinking a nice 24oz diet pepsi) thing and my performance. Anyway, I have a plethora of songs on the player… I mean after all 1GB can hold a number of songs. Unfortunately, some of the songs are inane bubblegum pop songs that would leave me embarrassed to even mention them, you know such classics as 'C'est La Vie' by B*witched or 'Stronger' by Mrs. Federline. But they do serve a purpose on a run and some songs have a good tempo, others have a good hook, some are even motivational in their lyrics. So when I approached the Lake Loudon Hill, I had to find a song that was fast, knew the lyrics to and would get me up the hill with good pace (given that I was really dehydrated at this point). So I found the golden ticket that would get me up the hill without stopping and that song was from the His Royalty… Sir Mixalot and 'Baby Got Back'. It's not a sprint song for me, but rather a good tempo song and so it helped perfectly. Okay, so he's probably not knighted by the British Royalty, but he laid out a great song with even a running reference! Yes, it is there among the million reference to a woman's rear end. It took me a while to get it, but he makes a reference to a fine athlete. The line of the song is 'I keep my women like flo-jo' wich refers to Florence Griffith Joyner, very talented American Woman Track athlete who kicked some major booty in the 1988 Seoul Olympics. A quote from FloJo: 'Nothing is going to be handed to you — you have to make things happen.'

So here is how it went down today:

Split Split Distance Overall Distance Split Time Split Pace Overall Time Overall Pace Comments
1 1.0 1.0 7:29 - 7:29 - &nbsp
2 1.0 2.0 7:50 - 15:19 7:40 &nbsp
3 1.0 3.0 7:51 - 23:10 7:44 &nbsp
4 1.0 4.0 8:20 - 31:30 7:53 &nbsp
5 1.0 5.0 8:52 - 40:22 8:05 &nbsp

[writer's note: all the big words in this post dedicated to Laura over at the
The Artful Blogger]


Life In General

Slower Pace and New Course

October 27, 2005 planet3rry No comments

Today was a touch colder than yesterday with more of a breeze as well. It made it much colder, enough to have to wear band-aids (runners know why) and long sleeved shirts. Just 2 weeks ago, I was running shirtless. Now I am running with extra layers, we aren't in the South… what was I thinking.

So today I had somethings going on because of the cold. I could really feel my hamstrings today. I pulled my left hamstring really badly in 2001 which has left me with residual issues ever since. One of the things that has been a result is that I can feel them when they have been worked hard or when it is cold. I think today was a combination of both. Yesterday was a fast long run, which put a lot of stress on them and today it was cold. So after listening to sage advice from my runner coach (me!) I decided that today would be slower and not as far.

As I was approaching the 2 mile marker, I decided to change course and take a new route back to the Aquatic Center. I figured that I could run through downtown and then back to campus within my lunch period and end up with about 4 miles. I had wanted to people watch as I run because there is not alot of action on the the James White Greenway. Here is a map of where I went today.

I didn't really keep time with my mileage today but I do know the following:

Split Split Distance Overall Distance Split Time Split Pace Overall Time Overall Pace Comments
1 1.0 1.0 8:03 - 8:03 - &nbsp
2 3.56 4.56 29:47 8:22 37:51 8:19 &nbsp

Life In General ,

Wednesday Already

October 26, 2005 planet3rry No comments

Has it really been since Friday that I updated this blog? Sheesh. I've been pretty bad at alot of things this past 6 days and just add this one ot the list.

The short-short version of the past few days. Friday: Jennifer got home from Puerto Vallarta just fine, very excited and intact. Jen's parents and our nephew Brian made the trip from SC to TN to get Tita Angie

Saturday: I missed the UT/Bama game… oh well. Sunday was Ryan's baptism, so he is all official. Monday I forgot socks and I wasn't going to run in no socks (been there, done that) so I ran errands instead. Tuesday was Ryan's 4 month shots (3 of them) so instead of going in half a day, I took the day off. So here we are at today.

Today I combined a speed workout with Traditional wednesday long run into something a little speedy with some distance. I ran the normal 5 miles that I normally do on Wednesday but I did it with zip today. I found myself finishing the first mile 7:09 with little trouble. A majority of this was that the weather was very cook and supported this distance with the speed. Other times, the heat was too oppressive to do anything worthwhile. I had a good run and would feel good about my 5k time if I ran one. Not at a PR time, but something that might put me in the top 3rd of age group finishers instead of the middle. And as for the 8k, today's time is better than 1/2 of my actual finishing times for the 8k, but still 4 minutes away from a PR which is not at this point reasonably acheivable.
Here are the splits:

Split Split Distance Overall Distance Split Time Split Pace Overall Time Overall Pace Comments
1 1.0 1.0 7:10 - 7:10 - &nbsp
2 1.0 2.0 7:36 - 14:46 7:23 &nbsp
3 1.0 3.0 8:04 - 22:50 7:37 &nbsp
4 1.0 4.0 8:16 - 31:06 7:47 &nbsp
5 1.0 5.0 8:18 - 39:24 7:53 I ran the entire mile, I didn't have to walk any despite the Lake Loudon hill

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Fell apart and rebuilt

October 20, 2005 planet3rry No comments

I held aloft my scheduling sword and said “I HAVE THE POWER!!!” Eric was at Grandma's for his first overnight with Mommy and Daddy not in (at least) the same building. Hmmm, no phone calls yet, so that is a good sign that all went well. So that left after 5 with me having a free evening until about 8 O'clock or so. I had to run a few errands such as: getting a new espresso carafe (gravity sucks), getting my haircut and getting diapers. Once at Grandma's was secured, I called Party Marty (aka Beer Boy) to arrange some running in the evening. We decided that we would run Cherokee Blvd which has a 5 mile crushed gravel path in Knoxville, a good place to run among $400,000 and $500,000 30 year old homes. So, knowing that I would be working out in the evening, I opted to run a few of the errands at my lunchtime to get them out of the way. Conveniently, Great Clips ($5.99 coupon) and Bed, Bath and Beyond (20% off coupon) are very close to each other. So I ran my errands and finished the rest of the day.

I got a call from Beer Boy at 5 saying that he was late leaving work because of some brewing issues and wanted to know if we wanted to change locations to someplace else as it wouldn't be until 6:00 to make it to Cherokee. We decided to meet at the Alcoa/Maryville Greenway, a nice 6 mile greenway that runs through the two towns. This is when things really started to fall apart. As I was traveling Alcoa Highway, traffic backed up and right at that time the SportsTalk show went to a traffic report. An accident on the southbound side of Aloca Highway (Oh, great) between a Tractor Trailer and a Horse Trailer (uh, oh) had happened at Topside Road (crap, I am 2 miles away from there) and Alcoa was backed up for a good distance. I called Beer Boy back and we decided that we'd meet at Volunteer Landing, because he wouldn't be affected much by the accident if he travelled North on Alcoa but if he went South, he would be stuck like I was.

So I turned around and made my way to Volunteer Landing, would take me 7 minutes… if I had taken the right route. I should have taken the Neyland Dr exit, but like a dummy, took the interstate, got stuck in traffic, got off on the Henley Street Exit only to get caught up in downtown traffic. Then was a victim of the one-way streets and had to pass right in front of Volunteer Landing, go to the campus and turn around. It was about 5:25 when I parked at Volunteer Landing. Ugh.

I figured that Beer Boy would be around in 20 minutes, so I decided to run a mile to get it under my belt. I was were I run during my Lunchtime runs, so I was familiar with the area. I ran a mile, not keeping time, and came back to wait. I decided to take advantage of the time to take pictures of Volunteer Landing, which was a nice break. When it was close to 6 and no Beer Boy, I decided to run another mile, just in case everything fell through, which at this point wasn't totally unbelievable. So I ran another mile, out and back and still no Beer Boy. I decided to run an additional mile to bring the count to 3, that way, if I had to abandon, it would not be all for naught. I run my 3rd mile and get back, at about 6:30, I get a call saying that he is about to Volunteer Landing (sigh) and would be there in about 10-15 minutes. So, I struck out for another mile and finished before he arrived.

Beer Boy finally showed up around 6:45 and we headed out for an out and back course that I mapped this morning to be 2.75 miles. I was late getting home because I still needed diapers, but all in all it was a good run. 6.75 miles, I am not complaining! Here are a few pictures that I took while waiting for Beer Boy, some will be queue for | P | L | A | N | E | T | 3 | R | R | Y |.

&nbsp

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Techno Man

October 18, 2005 planet3rry No comments

Today I ran my normal speed day on a day where I am normally a fish in water. Since I did not get a chance to workout and Ryan's schedule didn't allow me an evening, I made sure that I jumped back on schedule for the week. Today, I ran a quick 3 miles. Actually, it was the best 2 miles that I have had, even though they were not the fastest, the were consistent. I then walked about 0.2 mile to the Lake Loudon hill before I shredded that course, almost sprinting the last 200 feet or so. I was very happy to see this progression because it lets me know that I am getting closer to being able to run a PR time. If I had to guess, I would probably be able to run a sub-23 5k at this point.

It looks like Eric is going to have a sleep over tomorrow night. That means that I will have the evening essentially free after work. So I could go have a drink, go run, run errands, etc. I think that I will try to meet up with Beer Boy and from there run and pick up some stuff from Bed Bath and Beyond that I need now that I have coupons. All 3 will be taken care of. SWEET! and maybe another crazy story of The Misadventures of Beer Boy and Math Boy!

Here are my split from today…

Split Split Distance Overall Distance Split Time Split Pace Overall Time Overall Pace Comments
1 1.0 1.0 7:15 - 7:15 - &nbsp
2 1.0 2.0 7:15 - 14:30 7:15 &nbsp
3 1.0 3.0 10:43 - 25:13 8:25 &nbsp

I just realize I didn't allude to the post title nor did I encrypt any secret coding into my post. Sorry no PLANET3RRY code today. Anyway, today I ran with my cell phone and my MP3 player (which acted up on me), so I was full of gadgets on today's run… see, nothing exciting this time.


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Sore Legs

October 13, 2005 planet3rry No comments

The rule of thumbs for speed work is no more than 10% of your weekly mileage. Given that I have not had long runs on the weekend, this would mean that my speedwork should be about 1.7 miles or so. However, Monday I ran 3 speed and on Wednesday I ran 2.64 so for the week bith speed. With today's 5 that puts me at 10.64 miles for the week. Can you see the Math? My speedwork for this week has been 53% of my total mileage. And so what happens? Your legs feel like tree trunks. I already have the soccer tree trunk legs to begin with, so when they are tired, they become anchors that I have to carry for my runs. Ugh.

Luckily, it wasn't that hot outside and so I was able to muster enough energy to make it the 5 that i promised I would run. I don't have my preexisting code for the fancy-dancy table, so you'll has to deal with the low-tech version until I can edit this post

Split Distance Total Distance Split Time Overall Time
1 1.0 1.0 7:55 7:55
2 1.0 2.0 8:16 16:11
3 1.0 3.0 8:08 24:19
4 1.0 4.0 8:26 32:45
5 1.0 5.0 9:31 42:16

Life In General

Ressurrection

October 13, 2005 planet3rry No comments

I had to delete this post from yesterday… what it UP with my websites these past 2 days??? Sheesh!

MMMph! Human Error… what was I thinking? Who Knew that you needed to finish a row in a table with a “

“? Oh wait… I did.

Usually Wednesday is suppose to be my long run of the week, but I pulled rank over myself and ran a very quick out and back course. A new course as a matter of fact. I have uploaded a picture showing the course with some landmarks. It was such a nice to run. I almost ran with a shirt, but then decided it wasn't that cold, so ran without one since there won't be too many days like today. Soon, i have to worring about chaffing, bandaids and the like… yuck!

Split Split Distance Overall Distance Split Time Split Pace Overall Time Overall Pace Comments
1 1.32 1.32 10:04 7:38 10:04 7:38 I felt fast on this leg even in non-race conditions
2 1.32 2.64 10:48 8:11 20:52 7:55 -

Here is where I ran today. And I even had some admirers out on the course as well. A few whistles right at the turn around point. I didn't get to see who they were… but some attention is always at nice gesture!

Tomorrow will be my long run day… not a “super duper” long run, but a 5 miler!


Life In General ,

Posts Posts and more Posts

October 11, 2005 planet3rry No comments

Well, when it rains it pours. Here is another entry for the day, this time with some workout summaries and other not-so-exciting stuff. It's here so that I have something to look back on… I can hear you ho-humming out there :-)

So, the 3 regular readers know that there was no workout over the weekend. There was running on Monday and swimming on Tuesday. Both turned out to be decent workouts in their own right. Monday's run was a 3 mile speed day. I followed the same 3 mile course that I normally use on Monday and ended up having a decent time. The first mile is going to be my offical uncertified mile time, being that I know it's a mile according to the Map Program that I use… however it is not certified as some of the races here in Knoxville. Since we haven't had a road mile in a while, I do not have an official PR time. So, I now dub thee PR time…

Split Split Distance Overall Distance Split Time Split Pace Overall Time Overall Pace Comments
1 1.0 1.0 6:57 - 6:57 - My semi-Official PR time for a mile
2 1.0 2.0 7:32 - 14:29 7:14 &nbsp
3 1.0 3.0 8:42 - 23:11 - &nbsp

Next Monday maybe I will work out on the track and get a new PR

As for my swim on Tuesday, it went well. I did find out that pool is now being HEATED! Yay… it was very cold on Friday, so this is a good sign seeing that they put us rec swimmers outside. I ended up going 1097 meters (24 laps) but my first 400 meters was 8:30, so that was pretty cool.

Tomorrow looks like a good day for running… we shall see.


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This work is getting in the way of Blogging

October 5, 2005 planet3rry No comments

Tomorrow I have to go to the doctor to get my cholesterol checked in the morning and then do some fancy-dancy computer ninja moves to get my computer up and running. So, I probably will have little time to blog and comment (sounds like a fencing move).

So, I am forced to make another double workout post for Tuesday and Wednesday… a swim and a run. The expedited of tuesday's workout is: Me, swim, water cold, fast, 12 laps, about 9 minutes for 400 meters, good, pool floor clean.

Wednesday was a long run as scheduled. A five mile jaunt where the combination of the lessening heat and improving aerobic capacity had me go for 3.5 miles until I stopped for water. Split times are as follows:

Split Split Distance Overall Distance Split Time Split Pace Overall Time Overall Pace Comments
1 1.0 1.0 7:39 - 7:39 -
2 1.0 2.0 8:13 - 15:52 7:56
3 1.0 3.0 8:08 - 24:00 8:00
4 1.0 4.0 8:20 - 32:20 8:05
5 1.0 5.0 8:51 - 41:11 8:14

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