1 week until the big run!

I've got 1 week until my birthday.

That means one week until my birthday run.

One week until I run 30 solo miles.

I'm going to run around the neighborhood, that way when I get hungry or need to hit El Banó (that's Spanish for the bathroom) I will be in close proximity to the house.

The weather right now shows to be ideal. 55° low with a high of 66°, mostly cloudy and no rain. Can't ask for better!

I was originally concerned because the battery on my Garmin 305 wasn't lasting over 4 hours, and this run will probably take me over 6.

Luckily my amazing wife ordered me an early birthday present! A brand new Garmin 310! Battery life around 20 hours! SWEET!

I was hoping to get in a 20+ mile training run, but the longest I was able to get in was 15. And that 15 miles was quite easy. I felt as if I could have gone a lot longer.

I'm feeling quite confident leading up to this run. As long as I can eat really clean for the few days following up to the big run then I think my stomach will hold out the whole time. That's the only thing I can see that would prevent me from accomplishing my goal.

And depending on how this run goes, I'm eyeballing Rocky Racoon 50 at the end of January as long as work doesn't start dicking with my schedule again.

Bridge Running

Since both my aunt and myself were going to be at my mother's this weekend to celebrate an early Thanksgiving, we decided to go for a run together.

A while back she had mentioned that she wanted to go run the Veterans Memorial Bridge that I used to go run after work every once in awhile when we used to live here, so we decided to go run there.

I haven't ran this bridge in over a year now. Probably closer to 2 years actually. I remember it being very steep, very windy, and very very dirty. I remember it being covered in lose rocks, broken glass, chunks of blown out tires, and other miscellaneous debris. One time there was a destroyed X box scattered across the shoulder for about half a mile.

This time it was still just as steep and windy, but all the debris was gone!

I had started off in my new pair of New Balance Minimus HiRez shoes (pictured below), but as soon as I got to the other side of the bridge I stripped them off. My calves were solid knots and I felt as if my feet were just flopping around in my shoes.

As soon as I started running again I realized it was a great idea as I could feel my calves relaxing. The debris never bothered me any either. I guess all the rain they've been getting down here lately helped to wash the roads clean!

I ended up running a total of 6 miles. 3 uphill and 3 downhill in 1 hour and 6 seconds.

Pushing thru to bliss

Sometimes a run doesn't feel good at first. I've had this happen several times. I take off running and something isn't quite right. Theres one little nagging issue that keeps trying to get you to throw in the towel and cut your run short.

Sunday morning (yesterday morning) I went out early for a long run. It was around 33° when I left the house and it was all drizzling from the night before. All the roads and side walks were soaked and freezing cold.

It hurt. It was as if I had never ran barefoot before. The cold wet ground kept my feet from warming up too much, thereby amplifying every little change in the running surface. It felt like I was running on crushed ice.

For those of you who might not know to much about me, here's 2 key bits of info about Chaser Williams.

1) I'm from Texas. It stays over 95° about 10 months out of the year here. I don't get to run in the cold all to often.

2) I don't like the cold. I would rather run in 100°+ temps than run on anything below about 60° 

Now that you know this, you could imagine a rainy 33° run isn't my idea of a good time.

But I pushed thru the discomfort.

I was determined to run 15 miles.

I had a goal, and nothing short of getting ran over or the trots was going to stop me.

So I kept running.

At around 6 miles either my body adjusted, or the sun was finally warming the ground up, because my feet felt perfectly fine again!

The rest of the run was absolutely amazing! I felt great and probably could have gone on for another few miles afterwards!

I probably would have ran some more, but it seemed that every 4th or 5th house I passed was cooking bacon.

I'm not a huge bacon fan. Its good and all, I'm just not one of those guys that think bacon is the end all be all of the meat section of the food pyramid.

But when it's cold, and your already a little hungry because you haven't eaten yet, and the sun is just starting to light the road infront of you enough to be seen, bacon will break you.

Update and bad runs

A week and a half ago I created a post saying that I was running again and that I had 30 something days until my birthday run of 30 miles.

Well I'm still running! Yay!

My wife and I are also trying to eat better again. This time were slowly making changes. Every week we make a change. No sweets the week of Halloween was a tough one. More water intake wasn't a big deal for me, but I'm actually finding it difficult to fit in 4 to 6 servings of fruits /veggies a day. Next week is no more bread.

My runs have been going pretty good for the most part. I'm running at night now instead of in the morning. I'm not sure exactly what I think about that. My weekend long runs (yes, I've started them! ) are still in the mornings. Last Saturday I got up and knocked out 10 miles, and I'm actually preparing to go run another 10 miles right now (it is Saturday morning right now) and plan on running another 10 miles tomorrow morning.

Most of my runs feel good, but I did have one that started off like crap.

Everything felt stiff and disconnected. I couldn't find a good rhythm. I was bouncing too much, and my feel were slapping the sidewalk. Usually when this happens I take a few deep breaths thru the nose real slowly and try to get my body into a state of relaxation, but it wasn't happening this night. So I decided to do Fartleks instead.

For those who don't know, a fartlek is where you run at 2 different paces for different amounts of time/distances. For this run I chose to vary between my normal snail's crawl pace and a very hard effort pace.

Instead of choosing a distance or a time to alternate paces, I decided that when I got exhausted from running fast, I would pick a location as far down the sidewalk as I could see and run just past it. Then I would creep along again until I felt I had regained my composure and then take off again.

This took a bad feeling run and made it a good run that left me with some burning legs that were actually sore the next day. I don't get sore legs very often, so it was a bit of a suprise!

It made me think that I can go out and enjoy a good run every time I feel good, but the real challenge is to go out and enjoy the bad runs too. It's all about pushing yourself thru adversity!