Here are my stats from last year; considering I had never really run before, I think this is pretty good!
This year so far, I’ve run a total of four times, or once every other week, for about 13 miles. Suck.
I’m not quite sure what the deal is, why I’m not more motivated to run…I’m just not. I finally signed up for the St. Patrick’s Day Dash today, so I’m hoping that will help. I’m also hoping that I’ll be ready to run it in three weeks!
0When I think of “pace”, I generally think of “keeping up pace,” as if I’m always behind the eight ball, never on top of things, and striving to catchup.
When I read Run Less, Run Faster1, I noticed there is a constant theme of keeping the pace prescribed for that run. Even if you knew you could run faster, you have to run at that particular pace. Pace is vital and keeping the right pace is critical.
We ran 6 days a week, and every day, our “training” run resulted in a competition. No matter how much we bot insisted that “Today, we’ll take it easy,” at some point, one of use would push the pace and then the race would be on! No rest days. No speed days. Nothing but race days.
Having race day every day doesn’t work. I’d like to think that if I can just tough it out — if I can just get through the hour, the day, or the week going at 110%, that then I will finally find time to rest and recover.
That never happens though.
What ends up happening is things start dropping off my plate: I don’t turn things in on time, I get sleep deprived, I don’t do my best work, I neglect cleaning up after myself, I don’t eat well, I don’t get out…the list goes on.
I guess this point is that I run as fast as I can until I can’t run anymore and I crash, not always a big crash but still a crash.
What if I were to force myself to set a pace though? Maybe not even a great pace, but a pace that I can finish. Sure, I’d like to be able to run a seven minute mile for the entire half marathon, but that’s not going to happen2.
What if I ran a ten minute mile? Ugh, that’s so slow. But, I think I can do that without crashing (and I can…almost).
You may be able to see how this might translate more generally to life: setting goals which are maybe not so grandiose, but which are achievable and build upon themselves to propel one forward. I may have lull spots where nothing is happening, and that’s great! I did a little better that expected, but I don’t need to go fill that void with something ten times harder just “for the challenge.”
Obviously, one of things I want to try and focus on for this year is keeping a good pace. I’m not sure exactly how I’m going to do that, but I’m going to start by setting some resolutions that are easy and that I sort of like doing already.
Run four races
I want to run in four races this year, spaced roughly 3 months apart.
Here’s what I’m looking at so far:
I’d also like to run a 10K in the Fall, but I haven’t found one yet.
Write something meaningful once a week
This will, naturally, take place as a weekly blog post and starts with what you are reading here. The goal of “something meaningful” is to let what I’m writing marinate over the week so I can really wrestle with it and edit it. It’s also to avoid the well know fact that “Once you start measuring something, people will change the way they behave”3, case in point: “You can tell which people listed blogging as a performance review goal“.
I’ve done that before and sometimes can turn out really lame.
365 days, 365 pictures
Finally, I’d like to take a picture a day. I’ve been having a fun time taking pictures using Vignette for Android and uploading them using Flickroid, which is a nice alternative to carrying my camera around all day. Forcing myself to take a picture a day will make me more observant, I think.
Rules for my 365 challenge are:
I won’t post photos here every day because sometimes they sit on my camera for a bit before I get around to editing them. However, they have been taken and they will end up here eventually!
Speaking of which, here are this week’s winners:
Day 1 (January 1)
50.0 mm || 1/25 || f/2.2 || ISO800 || NIKON D7000
Seattle, Washington, United States
Day 2
Vignette for Android
Edmonds, Washington, United States
Day 3
Vignette for Android
Seattle, Washington, United States
Day 4
Vignette for Android
Seattle, Washington, United States
Day 5
Vignette for Android
Seattle, Washington, United States
Day 6
Vignette for Android
Seattle, Washington, United States
Day 7
Vignette for Android
Seattle, Washington, United States
Here’s to the pace!
What goals are you setting for yourself this year?
0Bill Pierce, Scott Murr, Ray Moss, et al ↩
For the record, I can run a seven minute mile…but only for one mile ↩
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2010/11/16/10091537.aspx ↩
I ran my first ever race a month and a half ago, the St. Patrick’s Day Dash. Here’s me running the race:
Photo by Al Cruise. ©2010 FotoJack.com
My official stats are:
Bib number: 9885
Overall place: 2844 out of 7892
Division place (Males 22-25): 170 out of 267
Gender place: 1799 out of 3529
Time: 36:241
Pace: 9:35
Not to bad for my first go. I didn’t hit my target of 8 minute miles, but I think part of that was due to the vertical inclination of the race (which I created using this Path Profiler):
Ignore the 4.47 miles, that’s incorrect. It was closer to 3.7 miles.
I had one little rest towards the top of the climb, but other than that I felt really good about my time and I was amazingly consistent given the vertical nature of my climb. I’m pretty sure the path around Green Lake doesn’t vary in altitude by more than 10 feet. Also, my Nike+ needs to be calibrated again…it keeps over estimating my runs by about 20%, which I feel is ridiculous.
After my big race, I took a week off and then ran one day. Then took the next month off, mostly because I was lazy and didn’t have a reason to run (I don’t enjoy running for the sake of running).
I do like competition though, so I signed up for the Benaroya Research Institute Triathlon at Seafair Sprint Triathlon. Am I crazy?! Probably.
It’s a 0.5 miles swim, 12 mile bike ride, and 3.1 mile run. And it takes place on July 18th at 7am in the morning!
I’m not actually entirely sure how I’m going to train for this. I don’t even have a bicycle. I think the good news is that I can swim2.
My plan for now is to pick up running again, which I started yesterday with a run around the long loop of Green Lake, and then intermix bicycle and swim training. Lingering questions include:
There are some training clinics I’m going to be going to, but I wonder if they will be enough for this endeavor. Anyway, expect future updates here. And if you’ve ever done something like this, I am now taking any and all suggestions.
0Average time: 40:48 ↩
Back in the Day™ (circa 1995), I used to be on swim team. Most recently, I did a swim class in college, but that was four years ago (What?! How could that be four years ago?) ↩
One month ago I decided to run a marathon…a dash…a run. Something.
Today I picked up my race bib (#9885), my timing chip, and my shirt. I also calibrated my Nike + iPod by running over to Roosevelt High School and running around their track a couple of times. I also finalized my iPod music, which has been carefully and scientifically calibrated to be awesome:
| Action This Day | Queen | Hot Space |
| Paranoid Android | Radiohead | OK Computer |
| Riding The Waves | Afro Celt Sound System | Volume 2: Release |
| The Piano Knows Something I Don’t Know | Panic At The Disco | Pretty. Odd. |
| Dirt Off Your Android (Instrum | Jaydiohead | Jaydiohead Instrumentals |
| The Middle | Jimmy Eat World | Bleed American |
| I’ll Do Anything | Jason Mraz | Waiting for My Rocket to Come |
| Just a Dream | James Fate | Nate James is James Fate |
| The Hands That Built America {From Gangs of New York} | U2 | Best of 1990-2000 [Bonus Tracks/DVD] Disc 1 |
| Kashmir | Bond | Shine |
| Gamble Everything For Love | Ben Lee | Awake is the New Sleep |
| Go to Sleep | Radiohead | Hail to the Thief |
| Flower | Moby | Gone in 60 Seconds |
| Wheels | Cake | Pressure Chief |
| Such Great Heights | The Postal Service | Give Up |
| The Electric Co. | U2 | Boy |
| Human | The Killers | Day & Age |
| Circle Of Life | Various Artists | The Lion King |
In terms of running, here’s a synopsis of what I’ve been doing:
My goal is to run the entire thing with under 8 minutes/mile (about 5 minutes/kilometer) and I think I can actually do it! All that’s left to do is go run! Sunday morning, 8:40am, Belltown, be there.
Update: I created an iMix for iTunes: Run Mix 1
0I signed up on Wednesday to run my distance first race ever1. I’ll be running in Henry Weinhard’s St. Patrick’s Day Dash, a grueling 6.11km race taking place on March 14th in the Queen Anne area of Seattle.
The race starts (3rd and Mercer) and finishes (5th and Harrison) by the Seattle Center and follows this route:
Some other people from Convergence are also going to be running it, including JoEllen, who I went to Haiti with and who sent out the original email, and Robert, and maybe Rebecca? Dad is also running it, which should be fun.
With only a little more than four weeks to go, I thought I’d better start practicing now (cramming doesn’t work as well with races). I devised an aggressive, but hopefully achievable plan for training.
| Week | Thursday | Sunday | Tuesday |
|---|---|---|---|
| Week 1 | 5/1 x 4 | 7/1 x 3 | 10/1 x 3 |
| Week 2 | 12/1 x 2 | 15/1 x 2 | 17/1 + 12 |
| Week 3 | 20/1 + 10 | 22/1 + 5 | 25/1 + 5 |
| Week 4 | 27 | 30 | 35 |
Explaination:
5/1 x 4: Run five minutes, then walk one minute; repeat four times
17/1 + 12: Run 17 minutes, then walk one minute, then run 12 minutes
27: Run 27 minutes
I broke out my Nike + iPod Sports Kit and set out on the first day of training:
I think one of my biggest problems right now is keeping a consistent pace. Based on how I ran, my goal is to run about a 5 minute kilometer (about an 8 minute mile). In order to keep pace, I determined that I need to take 167 steps per a minute2. I already have many the estimated BPM data for many of my songs in iTunes. Thus, for Sunday’s run, I’m going to try running to songs that are in the 160-170 BPM range and hopefully that will help with consistency.
0I ran 330m hurdles in high school a couple of times junior year…seven years ago ↩
