Workout: 6.68 mi, team run
Time: 1:12:57
Temp: 54˚F
The site for this morning’s run is known as the “Tow Path”, which is a dirt path that runs down the middle of a canal. I don’t know why it’s there, but I think it has something to do with towing. Of the several locations that our team regularly runs at, the tow path is the closest to me. I was glad for that this morning because at 7am, it was the earliest team run yet, so it was nice to only have to drive twenty minutes instead of an hour or more. |inline
Dec 19: 4 mi., 58:30, 47˚F
Dec 20: 450 crunches, 50 pushups (Ducks beat Stars, 4-1)
Dec 21: 4 mi., 44:32, 48˚F
I got back in synch with the training schedule on Tuesday, running the neighborhood route nice and easy with Kat. Yesterday was a rest/cross-train day. I don’t have any sort of structured cross-training regimen going on, but I’ve developed an informal habit that depends on when my favorite hockey team plays, and I choose to count it as cross-training. |inline
Dec 16 – 50 min. on an elliptical machine
Dec 17 – 5 mi. long run, 56:50
I had to adapt the scheduled workouts this past weekend to accommodate an [overnight stay in Manhattan][1]. I rested on Friday as planned, but since I couldn’t make the Saturday morning team run, I spent 50 minutes on an elliptical machine at our hotel’s fitness center. I hoped to make the alternate long run on Sunday (to run with other TnT teammates), but I wasn’t sure I’d make it so I treated my session on the machine as a full workout. I felt fine Saturday, but it would catch up to me the next day. |inline
Since I ended another long period of blog hibernation and began posting regularly again, I needed to attend to some overdue blogkeeping duties like making sure my software was up to date. In the course of routine maintenance, I discovered a plug-in called [Markdown][1] that I wanted to start using, which would simplify the process of writing my posts. Without going into the techie details, what this plug-in does is simplify what it takes to pull off formatting like italics, bold, and making links, compared to doing those same things with HTML tags. Basically, it lets you just write instead of having to write and code for formatting at the same time. |inline
Workout: 4 mi. Easy; the Yard
Time: 43:14
Temp: 47˚F
Last night, I attended a Team in Training “run clinic” that covered topics for first-time marathoners like nutrition, hydration, and apparel. I got a few good tips I hadn’t already heard or read elsewhere, including a nice way to sum up a truth I sort of understood already, but not in convenient fortune cookie form: “If you feel warm before you start, you’re over-dressed.” Taking that tip to heart this morning, I ran in shorts and one of my looser-fitting, long-sleeved tees. I felt a little chilly for about the first half mile, but sure enough I was comfortable the rest of the time. Any longer than 4 miles, and the long sleeves would have been too much. |inline
Time: 47:01
I got the miles in today, but there was nothing particularly interesting about the run. That’s good insofar as it means I didn’t notice any problems like knee twinges or anything. There was no deep thinking to write about later because my attention was on an audiobook I’ve been listening to: [Assassination Vacation][1], by Sarah Vowell. It’s a darkly humorous account of the author’s fascination with presidential assassinations and assassins, and her many visits to the historical sites related to them. It’s one of those books where you can learn a little history by accident, but history isn’t why you read it. |inline
Workout: 3 mi. Easy; the Yard
Time: 31:19
Temp: 56˚F
The day after the long run is always a rest day, but I did cross-train a little yesterday, if playing some [Dance Dance Revolution][ddr] with my niece counts as cross-training. Today was beautiful running weather, which I managed to over-dress for because the memory of Saturday’s cold was still fresh. I would have been perfectly comfortable in shorts and a running tee, but I went out in long running pants and a close-fitting long-sleeved top. If it were a longer run, I would have been in trouble, but it was just short enough to stop before serious over-heating set in. I ran very easy for the first mile, stopped to stretch, and ran the remaining two without any knee problems, so I’m thinking there might be something to this stretching thing. (I’m still not convinced about flossing, but that doesn’t affect my running so I’m still holding out.)
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Workout: 5 mi. (first TnT team run)
Time: ~52:00 (40:16 for last 4 miles)
Temp: 25˚F
I’m not normally an early riser, so I dreaded the early wake-up for this morning’s run more than I did the five miles I hoped to complete. I managed the wake-up with only two presses of the snooze button, and was out the door by my target time of 6:30am. On the other side of the door, it was immediately apparent that I was wasting my time dreading the early morning, when what I should have been dreading was the cold. |inline
Workout: 3 mi. Easy
Time: 49:39
Temp: 49˚F
Please forgive me for resorting to a generic naming convention for these training updates, but this is only the third one, and I’m already realizing it’s going to get harder and harder to come up with a clever title every time I go run a few miles in the Yard. If an update covers something unique enough to rate a clever subtitle, I’ll pin it on with a colon – or maybe an em dash since it looks more like a pin – but some titles probably won’t get more original than “TnT #12″. “TnT” was helpfully suggested to me by a friend as a good abbreviation for “Team in Training”, when I complained that abbreviating it as “TiT” didn’t seem to capture the right spirit of the thing. The numbers will let you know what order these updates were written in, which will come in handy if you ever print out the entire series and have a sudden wind blow all the pages out of your hands, as I’ve often seen happen in the movies. (Speaking of which, I once delivered a best man speech that way, pretending that my notecards had been mixed up so I had to read them out of order.) |inline
Workout: 4 mi. Easy
Time: 59:00
Temp: 38˚F
I returned to the place that I used for the first time yesterday, which I’ve decided to call “the Yard”. I’m not really sure who owns that piece of land or if they’d care that I run on it, but until someone catches me and complains, I’m going to use it. Even though it’s just going in laps, I already prefer it to the usual neighborhood circuit I’m used to running, because it’s flat and soft. This is particularly important to me right now because I’m still worried about my right knee. It’s no more boring than the neighborhood route has become, and my iPod helps with that. A standard running safety tip is that you shouldn’t run with headphones so that you can be more aware of potential dangers like traffic or…I don’t know…maybe lions. The Yard has no traffic, and I haven’t seen any lion tracks yet, so I don’t have to feel guilty about listening to my iPod while I run, like I usually do when I listen during neighborhood runs. |inline
