It has been a busy couple of days to say the least.

However, last night after one of those nearly 40,000 step days, I had a hankering for carbs…lots of carbs…let’s be real sweets. For the most part I have been avoiding processed foods, candy and desserts, while eating primarily real food for the past couple of months. Not last night, even though we had a nice supper, when we finished my body craved and I caved in to go to the “store” and get sweets: Whoopie Pies, Chocolate No Bake Cookie and Sweet Tarts.

When I got home and demolished them all within the space of 20 minutes. It was like I was not in control and could not stop once I started. Not good. This morning I woke up feeling like I had gone 12 rounds and gotten the crap kicked out of me. You know a lot like having a bad hangover, but without the “fun” of drinking too much alcohol, like we might have in our younger days.

So what did I learn from last night.

1. That I do have a sugar addiction and that when I let it run…it doesn’t do me one bit of good.

2. When I have one of those days where I get well over 30,000 steps in that my willpower exponentially decreases its ability to resist the sugar treats.

Okay, so I learned a lot last night and they say that knowledge gained is only as good as how you use it. Which means that I will be more cognizant of the sweet tooth and hopefully not be as likely to repeat last night’s implosion.

What on earth were the factors that lead up to all this?

Wednesday was a scheduled day off from running and while I did a pretty good job of not overdoing things, I still had to roof rake the garage, which always just puts a hurting on the old body – especially my shoulders. However, it is safer than climbing on the roof and shoveling, so I deal with the discomfort as best I can.

The other thing and this was probably a big factor is that SD2’s oldest dog had not been doing well for the past couple of months and it was time. That afternoon she was put to sleep at 18 years old. So the family was dealing with that loss. It is though to loose one of our family, but it was time for her to take the long sleep, still it is hard.

Thursday brought snow and chauffeur duty to Augusta, which meant a trip to the gym on the way home to do my run. The planned workout was a 5.0 mile tempo with a warm-up and cool-down mile.

What I did:

1.0 mile warm-up @ 6.4 mph

4.0 mile Tempo @ 7.8 mph

1.0 mile harder Tempo @ 8.0 mph

0.5 recovery

5 x 0.1 strides @ 9.1 or plus mph with 5 x 0.1 recovery

0.5 cool-down @ 6.3 mph

0.5 walking

For a total of 8.0 miles of running. It was a hard workout to get done, but surprisingly it was not as hard as I thought it was going to be, as evidenced by the being able to handle the faster last mile of the tempo run and the still being able to do the strides after I rested for a bit.

The strides felt good and I might have gotten a bit faster than I thought I would on the last two.

Although I did feel a bit stooopid when I realized about two miles into the run that I hadn’t started my watch. Oh well, stuff happens like that when you have a lot on your mind. The run did clear my head out pretty well though.

Overall, a really great run an one that I probably would not have attempted if I hadn’t done it first thing. I did get a text while running the last mile of the tempo and needed to look at it as soon as I finished it. Just in case my chauffeur hat needed to be donned again to go get SD2 who was still very upset about Wednesday. Luckily it wasn’t anything important and I was able to finish the workout.

Once I got home it was time to move snow so for about 2 1/2 hours I “played” behind the snowblower or shovel and got rid of the 2-4 inches of pain in the arse snow from three driveways. Luckily the neighbor has sold his house and is either closing today or early next week – one less thing to worry about.

By the time I got done with the snowblowing I had over 37,000 steps and was totally wiped out. Which meant lunch and a nap. By the end of the day I had gone over 38,000 steps and didn’t have nearly enough willpower left to combat the – I wanna eat sweets message that the body was sending out.

Yeah, so I had a learning experience over the past couple of days and now know a bit more about how my sweet tooth can effect me when I am tired.

I will get back to avoiding most sweets again, but I do not ever see me completely giving them up, although next time, I want to be the one in control, not the so-called sugar rush.

It is still difficult for us not have Karma around, but she had a good life and was well loved by us all.

Yes, I am an old softie, I just do not show it all that often, but our critters do take a piece of our hearts when they go, but at the same time they give so much more back to us while they are with us that it is worth the pain when they leave.

Treadmill time and you know something, I rather enjoy doing my speedwork on the treadmill rather than on the track or using a marked trail. For me at least I just get to focus on running at the correct pace and learn how it feels to run at that speed. Even though I know there is a transition to running the same speeds outside, it is helping me this year learn more about my running.

I know treadmills are not for everyone, but they are working for me.

Today’s workout called for a 5 x 1K, but since I didn’t feel like dealing with the conversion and then have a 400m recovery to deal with that distance conversion as well on the treadmill, I decided to do a 4 x .75 with .25 recoveries at 10K pace instead. This kept me at the 3.0 mile goal total for my faster repeats.

This increasing the distance of the fast repeats is getting to the distances that I don’t enjoy – at all. In fact I rather believe that they suck, especially the last three. I am an old sprinter and have the mindset that running multiple laps around a track or in this case for several minutes at a hard pace – multiple times just ain’t that much fun for me.

It isn’t that I can’t do it, it is more that I do not like to do them.

Okay enough whining about having to run fast/hard for longer than a quarter or half mile. What did I actually end up doing.

1.0 mile warm-up @ 6.3 mph

4 x .75 @ 8.3 mph – The first one or two were not really all that bad, the third one seemed to be longer than 3/4 of a mile and the last one was just run hard, keep running, focus on keeping good form and not give up on the repeat. I finished this part of the workout and was happy to be done with it.

4 x .25 @ 6.2 mph – recovery

1 x .25 @ 8.6 mph – I really wanted to do 3 of these, but after the 4 x .75 fast repeats the legs just didn’t have a lot of pop left in them and I decided to not even attempt to try any more. I didn’t want to tempt fate too much by running faster beyond the planned workout.

.50 @ 6.3 mph – a comfortable pace to recover from everything.

.75 @ 6.6 mph – just wanting to get it done.

.25 @ 7.8 mph – race pace for the last quarter. I didn’t have any issues running this pace even though the legs were pretty much toast.

A total of 7.0 miles and when I got done, I know that I was glad to be done.

It was not a workout that I enjoy. Once I get beyond half mile repeats it gets into an area where I am not strong. However, I also know without any doubt that this is one the areas that I need to focus on to get stronger for racing at any distance – my stamina.

This is one of the reasons that I specifically chose the Hansons Method, I knew that it would force me to get out of my comfort zone, do the longer repeat that will help me improve my biggest weakness.

A good workout that did take me out of my comfort zone.

Today was my scheduled long run – 11.0 miles at just over 9:00 minute pace was the plan. Not a long, long, long run, by any stretch of the imagination, but further than I have run in quite a while, so I didn’t need any extra issues from the roads being trashed from last week’s snow/ice/rain storms.

Whine alert – yes I do more than my share of whining in this post, so you can chuckle at me starting now.

That footing thing had me concerned about running locally in Sidney and while I knew outer Civic Center Drive in Augusta was clear, but I really didn’t feel like running there again today and I was pretty sure that the Rail Trail probably was not all that runnable.

Then I remembered how running up in Waterville last year was better than any where else in the area. Hell, I even changed my Planet Fitness membership to up there because the outside routes were a lot better for running. So I headed up there to do my long run.

When I got to Waterville I saw the road conditions and got a bit concerned. The side of the roads were not plowed and had a frozen layer of plow comming (you know the stuff the plow leaves as it goes by) on just about all the main routes.

So I took off to see how the bridge to Winslow was and from the light by Good Will, until you got across the Sebasticook River really wasn’t runnable in my opinion. At least it was not safe to run, with the iced over sidewalks and no room on the side of the road, with the amount of traffic that I would have to encounter.

I even drove around Cool Street and First Rangeway, not great, but runnable. If it hadn’t been so late, I was seriously thinking about heading to Augusta or even back to Sidney, where at least the roads were clear or there would be less traffic.

It was getting late. Continue reading →

Yes, I finally got to get my butt outside for a decent run. The temp was almost balmy at 39*F and a pretty stiff wind out of the NW at 15 mph, yeah right in the wheelhouse for a nice run outside.

We got just enough snow and rain yesterday that I waited until this morning to do the clean-up – three driveways snowblowed and then walking with Bennie down-back almost two miles, meant that I seriously thought about shortening my scheduled 6.0 miler this morning.

With the conditions outside this morning, running around the house was not really a consideration, the roads were still crap and down back, while runnable in sections, other parts were not worth taking a chance on. Ice is my enemy.

Augusta where my Planet Fitness is located, is usually pretty clear after a storm and while it is not all that great for scenery, at least the footing is mostly predictable and there is room on the side of the road to run fairly safely.

So I drove into Augusta. Continue reading →

Okay what happened yesterday?

It was supposed to be a rest day, to lounge around and relax after a hard speed session on Tuesday. You know a scheduled day off and I was actually looking forward to not running yesterday – I needed the day off.

Well the good thing was that I did not run.

However, we did get a storm that left 7-10 inches of snow to move around. Which I did in the morning, about 3 hours of playing behind the snowblower. I thought that it was done, but when we sat down for lunch the rains came for about an hour and then it snowed again, just enough that I had to go out and play behind the snowblower again for another 2.5 hours. Continue reading →

Yeah, all that glitters is gold – right!!!???

Not always, but last week I did a great 6 x .50, with .25 recoveries and thought that it was one of the best workouts that I have had in a long time. Fast forward a week and I have been planning on doing the same workout again today.

This is what Bennie and I did this afternoon after today’s workout.

Why?

Well I am doing the Hansons Half Plan and I didn’t want to screw around with the math last week when it was scheduled to be 600m repeats, with 400m recoveries. In all my wisdom I figured it would be easier on the old noggin to just focus on running half mile repeats than attempting to figure out the 600 conversion and keeping track of everything.

I will most likely do the same thing next week with the 1K, 1200m repeat workouts and convert them to .75 fast repeats for the sake of convenience. Although I might do the first week a little slower (10K race pace) to focus on completing the workout.

Okay, so I knew that I could do the workout and focused on only being positive all weekend about this workout that in the past I found to be right on the edge of my mental want to do, more than my physical ability. I really was not always that positive about running fast repeats beyond .25. Continue reading →

This morning it was one of those you wake up to an inch or so of pain-in-the-arse white shite, which meant just enough snow moving for three driveways and then getting to walk Bennie a ways in wet slushy crap.

After Bennie’s first walk, I decided to throw together this breakfast and it didn’t last too long, although Bennie did do more than his usual begging for a piece of the sausage pattie. 🙂

Can you tell that I love snow about this time of year. Sometimes I think that I would almost rather deal with a 6-12 inch storm than a PIA 1-2 inches. At least what I didn’t have to move melted for the most part later in the day.

Which meant that while I was scheduled for a Something of Substance (SOS) workout according to the Hansons Half Plan, it didn’t mean that I was chomping at the bit to do it after having over 10,000 steps on the old body by 9:30a. Yeah, I was already tired and really thought about moving the planned tempo workout to Friday.

However with freezing rain in the forecast for tonight, I figured that I might as well just do it today and get it over with. I figured that I would do the minimum: 1.0 mile warm-up, 3 miles at 1/2 marathon race pace and a mile cool-down.

Err that was the plan.

1.0 warm-up @ 6.3 mph – no issues and the legs started to feel pretty good

4.0 tempo @ 7.8 mph – I felt really strong the entire time and focused on keeping my form compact.

.50 cool-down @ 6.1 mph – Everything felt good, so I decided that I would do some strides.

7 x .10 strides @ 9.1 mph and .10 recovery @ 6.1 mph – the fast stuff felt really good and when I got to the 6.5 mile point, I decided to keep doing them to 7.0 miles

Dramatic pause and music cued please.

1 x .10 strides @ 10.1 mph – my old quarter repeat speed something that I haven’t felt comfortable enough to try lately and even though it was only for .10, it felt good to run that fast and be able to do it without pain or feeling like the old body was going to go into shock or something.

Walked .40 to cool-down at constantly slower paces.

I am very happy with how well the workout went this morning, while I have been getting closer to being able to hold some of these paces better than I have in the past – that consistent training thing is helping a lot. I didn’t expect to be successfully doing this kind of volume workout at this point in my training, actually, I didn’t expect to hit these kind of paces at all.

While I usually do better on the treadmill, I am also finding that this year most of my treadmill progress is also translating to running better outside. So I am hoping that keeping pretty close to the Hansons Half Marathon training plan will provide me enough structure to keep making good progress, but at the same time letting me continue to see progress, but allow me to stretch out the legs every once in a while, just not all that often.

Believe me, I know that I need to keep to the guard rails that the Hansons plan is providing me, so that I do not go into full “Harold Mode” and screw everything up by doing too much or thinking that I too can run “that” fast again.

Sometimes I am my own worst enemy and this year I want to work hard to avoid that guy for as long as I can.

The other thing was that I had a nice conversation with an old co-worker from my UMA days, who ran on the treadmill beside me and congratulated me on my workout. I was so focused in on my workout that I didn’t notice her getting on the treadmill or watching me change speeds. I laughed a little when we talked about how it wasn’t bad for an old fart.

We did get caught up on some other stuff and it was nice to talk with her again.

A pretty decent workout.