That was quick…

Well, due to an error in judgement during a run last night, I ended up running further than I had intended. (Reminder: I need to investigate why my “half way” notification didn’t trigger.)

Thus, to the best of my knowledge, my new personal run(+walk) distance record was set last night as 6.69 miles. Yay! I still expect this to be beaten soon, though probably not for at least another week.

I had recently lamented that I was struggling with my runs and that it might be that my pace was too fast. I’ve experimented with my pace over the last few runs and I’m no longer so sure. I think that I typically struggle with Tuesday morning runs, for some reason, and that leaves me with a skewed opinion until Thursday’s run.

That being said, hills suck. 🙂

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Longest Run… or Not!

Written yesterday, but my blog was down.

I had thought today’s 6.22 miles was my distance record. A bit of research revealed my error.

2011-02-05 6.68 C210KW6D1
2006-04-10 6.62 from auto shop
2005-10-02 6.34 IBM Uptown Classic 10K

My current record is from when I was doing the Couch-to-10K program early last year. Oddly, I made it through week 7, day 3, before taking a break and yet none of those later days were longer. Week 6, day 3, is, however, missing from my data.

I knew about the Uptown Classic 10K, but I naively expected it to have been shorter than 6.22 miles. The 6.62 miles from an auto shop is from one time I dropped the truck (pre-Prius; actually, maybe pre-truck-Durango).

While doing this research, I had to consult three separate sources of data: my old GPS logs (linked to from my Blog in the “Also See My” section), my Garmin logs (linked as its own MY GPS LOGS section), and my Nike+ logs on my iPhone (though I suppose I could link to those as well). Clearly, some consolidation is in order. I’m not sure what the best choice is for storing the data or how easily it will be to migrate the other data to that choice.

Week 4 of Bridge-to-10K is coming up soon with 3 extra minutes of running, but that’s probably not quite enough to set my record. Week 5, Day 3 is the run that will almost certainly set the new record. Interestingly (to me), that run is likely to hold the record unless I make the decision to move past 10K. The Week 6 runs are just a tiny bit shorter than Week 5, Day 3. There is no Week 7.

Bun Run

Last Sunday, Hershey and I participated in the 30th annual Bun Run 5K. I had recently completed the Couch-to-5K training program and decided that this would be a good opportunity to make use of that training.

I’ve been training with about a 9:00/mile pace, probably a bit slower. Additionally, since completing the C25K plan, I’ve switched over to a Bridge-to-10K plan that starts off with shorter stretches of running, though more of them. (Three 10-minute runs instead of one 30-minute run, for example.) Because of this, I was a little worried that my stamina would have dropped a bit. Therefore, in preparation for the run, I set my target pace as 8:45-9:45/mile.

A key factor I had not considered was that the presence of the other runners would encourage Hershey to run faster. We ended up with an average pace of 8:35/mile, smashing my previous 5K PR (over 30 minutes) with an official chip time of 26:55! (I just now looked it up and was surprised to see it under 27 minutes; my GPS time was 27:16.) I placed 265/1236 overall and 20/62 in my division.

There was an option to have a chip for your dog as well, but I chose not to, as I expect may have been a common choice. From the results, 27 dogs were timed and 6 of them finished faster than Hershey, though only 1 female was faster! Good job, Hershey!

Century Mark

Notably, this is from a fairly arbitrary starting point of whenever I began using Nike+ as my secondary GPS tracker for my runs. Still, I like it. 🙂

Couch to 10K… eventually….

Over the last year or two, I’ve been starting and stopping a Couch-to-10K training schedule. The reasons I end up stopping are varied and not the point of this post. How to start-up again is the question.

I’ve tried several methods, including ignoring a short hiatus and starting from scratch. Neither of those has been satisfying and I’m trying to find a better alternative.

This particular instance saw me get through Week 5, Day 1 of the 3-day-a-week, 13 week program, followed by a non-training 5K run and then what looks likely to be a two week break. Continuing to Week 5, Day 2 doesn’t seem like a good idea and I certainly don’t look forward to restarting the whole program.

Perhaps a good rule of thumb would be to backtrack the same number of days that I’ve skipped. Hmm… that actually sounds like a reasonable plan, so that’s probably what I’ll end up doing. Next week.

Headphones

I was commenting over at kapgar‘s site on his post about his headphones futzing out, but very quickly I realized that I was going to write a lot and decided to make my own post instead. So here it is.

I go through headphones like crazy. I mostly by cheap headphones, so I presume that’s a big part of the problem. But not always. I’m partial to over-the-ear headphones as the plain ear buds simply don’t stay in my ears.

Sony MDR-J11G Headphones

Philips SH J030 Headphones

I’ve had these Sony’s for a while, but even they tend to fall out of my ears when I run. They have a clip on them which helps a lot as it transfers most of the weight, but the clip broke months (a year?) ago. I’ve gone through a couple of similar sets that have failed, but this particular pair has lasted quite some time, other than the clip. More recently, I’ve started using something like these, though I’m not sure those are the specific ones. They have hinges on the behind-the-ear hooks, which help quite a bit. However, there isn’t enough tension and they still come loose when I run — particularly in my right ear.

Altec-Lansing UHP 307 Headphones

After I got my iPhone last year, I started looking for some over-the-ear headphones that also included a microphone. I found these Altec-Lansings at the Apple store and was actually very happen with them. They were comfortable for everyday use, allowed for phone conversations, and stayed in my ears when I ran. Also, the cord is nylon wrapped so I anticipated that they would be much sturdier than typical headphones. Apparently not, as they really didn’t last very long before one of the ears started failing due to a broken wire.

Altec-Lansing BackBeat 903 Bluetooth Headphones

For a while, I considered buying another set of the same headphones, but I was hesitant given how short-lived the previous pair had been for their cost. Finally, the iPhone 3.0 OS upgrade enabled bluetooth music and my quest changed to finding a set of over-the-ear bluetooth headphones with built-in mic. I found another set of Altec-Lansings that looked very promising. I’ve been quite happy with them, but I’m saving the deatails for a video blog that I’ve been meaning to do for weeks now. I will note that I haven’t tried running with them because I don’t run with my phone, so no bluetooth.

Garmin 405: Running Again

I bought a Garmin Forerunner 405 today, pretty much on a whim. Well, not completely on a whim as I had commented about it over at ilaxSTUDIO.com a whole four days ago. I had originally intended to get the 405CX, but the 405, with heart rate monitor, was on sale such that instead of the CX only costing an extra $20, it was an extra $100. I couldn’t pass up the sale price, particularly since there’s so little difference between the two models.

One of the main features that led me to purchasing this despite the fact that the Forerunner 201 I already have still works fine is the integration with Garmin Connect (plus the fact that my 201 doesn’t work with my Mac). I’ve added a widget to my blog that shows my last five activities and provides a link to the Garmin Connect page for the activity. On this page you can see graphs and other data from the activity.

Naturally, I had to take the new device out for a spin, so I want for a rare evening run. You can see the details of it here.

Now that I have a new toy, I’m sure I’ll be running a lot more. In addition, we’ve planned this year’s Fredericksburg bike ride for early next month, so we’re going to ramp up our bike riding over the next several weeks. These things should help me with the second half of my weight loss goal (a ticker of my progress is another recently added widget on my blog).

The Power of Guilt

I’ve been doing pretty well on my diet lately (down another three pounds since my previous update) , but I still haven’t gotten back into the grove of exercising. However, I splurged at lunch today at my favorite burger place, which led to me finally going for a run during my daughter’s soccer practice.

Sure, it was only 25 minutes (and only 2 miles), but it’s a start. I’m hopeful that it will be the start of a trend. Plus, I’m really planning to start back up on the Wii Fit tomorrow morning.

I’ll be going off diet for the trip to TequilaCon next weekend, so the more I accomplish before then, the better. Which is a much improved attitude over how I would normally feel, “might as well just wait ’til after the trip!” of course, there’s always another excuse available around the corner.

Diet Progress

It’s been about four weeks since I blogged about my Fast Food Diet, and while I’ve done a pretty good job following it most of the time, I certainly didn’t during the cruise.

In the week from the day of that post (which was not actually the beginning of the diet, but that’s OK) to my last weigh-in before the cruise I lost a couple of pounds. But, of course, I was up about five pounds over the week of the cruise. Since then, I’ve managed to lose about six-and-a-half pounds. So I’m only down four pounds in four weeks.

Given that I haven’t used the Wii Fit since before the cruise, haven’t run at all in months, and have hardly biked this year, I feel like I’m doing pretty well. Plus, I’m actually down about ten pounds since Mardi Gras, which was pretty much my high point.

I really need to get back into the groove of exercising. Maybe tomorrow. Or Monday. Or….

Burnet Tri-Hard

On Sunday, Marci and I participated in the 10th Annual Burnet TRI-Hard Challenge. This was another sprint distance triathlon, though with a longer bike portion (17-18mi). I hadn’t practiced or trained enough for this one, so it was really just a “finish-it” goal for me — and pretty much for Marci as well.

overall rank	total time	swim rank	swim time	bike rank	bike time	transition_2 time	run rank	run time
193	2:09:12.2	185	30:31.1	154	1:02:38.6	02:02	189	33:56.6

I’m not sure why they didn’t log transition_1, but based on my GPS data, I think it must be included in with the swim. I’m actually quite satisfied with my bike and run times, and even my swim time given that I hadn’t swum at all since the last triathlon.