Tag: dietbet

Recovery and Hills

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Today I did my run on the dreaded treadmill. That bane of every runner. The necessary evil that we must endure when the weather is too bad to be outside. But wait I live in Phoenix! The weather this time of year is as close to ideal as it gets.

Well, today there where a couple of factors that made the dreadmill, as my cousin calls it, an attractive alternative to the usual run outside. First, I’m still in recovery mode from the weekend. the 9 mile run and tough mudder where kind of hard on the old body and I’m still pretty sore.

Reason number 2: I’ve basically been up since 2:30 am. Adam, who ran the tough mudder with Vicky, Krista, and I had a 5 am flight. This meant that he wanted to be at the airport at 3:30, which lead to leaving the house at 3, and in turn meant getting out of bed at 2:30. Since I basically work at the airport I just went to the parking lot and tried to sleep in the truck. As you can imagine that flew like a lead zeppelin and at 5 am I gave up and went inside to start working. Coincidentally I got a great parking spot today. This lead me to think that I would just do a light workout.

Reason number 3: This is probably the best reason. As mentioned I work at an airport. Airports are notoriously flat places. Today’s training schedule called for 9-10 hills. Basically sprint up the hill for 60 seconds and then slow down the hill. Rinse and Repeat. So I could use the incline on the dreadmill and seriously up the speed to simulate a hill.

So that’s what I did. 10% incline at 7 mph for 60 seconds the flat at 5 mph for 2 minutes. Made for a nice 30 minute workout. I coupled that with a 2 mile warmup @ a 9:20 pace and a 1 mile cool down at about a 15 min/mile pace and it was about an hour. Not bad for a long lunch. Actually I felt like it was a pretty hard workout.

Couple little odds and ends here. I’m still needed to look into the nutrition side of this running thing. I’ll keep you all posted on what I find.

I have officially signed up for a half marathon in April.  The Christie Clinic Illinois Half Marathon on April 28 at the University of Illinois.

The dietbet folks have started a new thing called runbet. Same basic concept you choose a challenge, pay into it and then follow the training challenge submitting your runs either through runkeeper of with some photos. At the end if you make the challenge then you get your money back plus a portion of the extra from the folks who didn’t make it. I know for the dietbet it was a pretty good motivator.

Next run is 8-10 miles on Thursday. Until then…C-ya!

Lunch Runs and Musical Randomness

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Tuesday during lunch I decided to use the Fitness Center at work and go for a run. There were several reasons that I did this and I’m so glad that I did.

First I was up late on Monday night. I wish that I could say that it was because I was out late having a good time and livin’ it up. But it wasn’t. I was up late helping Vicky grade papers. Exciting stuff I know. We finished up around 1 am and I decided that sleeping until 6 was a better idea than getting up for a 4 mile run.

Why 4 miles? Because I am part of a running challenge\club called Project 1:59. It is a group on Strava and lead by two-time Olympian Kara Goucher that includes a training program with the aim of helping people run a sub 2 hour half marathon. I’ll put a link for it here Project 1:59.

Anyway, Tuesday’s run was a 4 mile run at faster than race tempo. And I wasn’t going to be able to in the even because on Tuesday’s I go to Trivia with Vicky and her parents.

Another reason was it was the last day of a challenge that I was a part of on DietBet. Which is an app that runs challenges to help motive and provide accountability for people trying to lose weight. This was a 4 week challenge to lose 4% of my body weight. I had another 1.5 to go so I didn’t want to skip the run.

So, at lunch I walked from my building over to the fitness center about .5 mile away. Changed into my running gear. which now includes a new Garmin 645 music. I was super excited to use this on a run because it meant that I didn’t have to carry my phone to listen to music.

And apparently I was really excited to go on this run. My first mile was 7:54. I haven’t ran a mile that fast since college. The rest of the run went about as well with the 4 miles coming in at 34:44 for an average of 8:41 min\mile. For me this is seriously fast.

I learned several things on this run.

I’m way faster than I thought. I know that isn’t fast for some of you out there but I have considered myself to be an 11min/mile guy for a long time. I am not pushing hard enough.

Running next to a large airport is alot of fun. I really like watching planes take off and land. Running beside Skyharbor airport is like Christmas for me. I watched a V-22 Osprey come in and land.

When one lives in the valley of the sun and its starting to get warm again (80+ degrees) don’t wear a black shirt on a mid day run. Seriously, I got super hot and felt like it zapped some of my energy.

I have a very odd playlist when I run. I was just discussing playlists with thedancingrunner earlier and hers looks somewhat cohesive. I make huge jumps from DMB I did it, Eric Clapton’s Layla, Reel Big Fish Sell Out, Britney Spears Get Naked, Trombone Shorty’s Like a Dog, JT’s Supplies…..and the randomness goes on.

Anywho…I need to figure out how to do a 6-8 mile run tomorrow and the group 4 mile run. Maybe I’ll go early and just do the course twice. I’ll let you know how that goes. Until then, C-ya!