Rob Murphy

10.25 miles in 1:21:38 (7:58). For an easy 10 mile run at 8 minute pace, I feel a little too achy right now. Knees, shins, left hamstring, lower quads all have what I would call "low grade pain" - not injury type pain, but still a concern. I'll have to remember that rest and recovery should be more important now than any mileage or race goals.

I've been thinking a lot over the weekend about how I can continue improving as a runner as I approach my late 40s. In your 20s and 30s, the formula is pretty simple - train harder. At my age you will, of course, improve with more consistent training. However, the need to balance hard training with rest and recovery becomes more crucial and finding that balance can be troublesome.

For me, the issue comes down to weight. In 2009 I ran a 2:52 marathon and a 1:18 half marathon with a typical race day weight of 153 pounds. In 2010 I ran a 2:43 and a 1:15 and I weighed 145 on race day. For 2011, I have set a goal of 1:13 for the half marathon (either in Austin or Salt Lake) and sub 2:40 for the marathon (at Ogden hopefully). I think I'll have to weigh around 138 to 140 to accomplish that.

 I've made quite a few positive changes to my diet in the past few years which have helped me improve as a runner. However, as I think about my diet, I can still see plenty of room for improvement. So I've decided to use this blog to record what I eat every day as well as my training activities. I'm going to be completely honest and I think writing it down will help me get rid of some embarrassing  habits.

So, here we go.

Breakfast - at 6 am I had two pieces of peanut butter toast on honey whole wheat bread, a glass of OJ, multi-vitamin, 2 fish oil tablets. Two cups of coffee.

Mid morning: One big banana

Lunch - A pile of pasta-noodle stuff with cauliflower, carrots and Swedish meatballs from IKEA. They sell more than furniture!  Lots of water.

Afternoon snack: Cliff Bar and a few handfuls of peanuts!

 Dinner: Stuffed Chicken and Rice with a sourdough roll. Water

Today's Run: 7.5 miles on the treadmill generally between 8 and 9 mph.

I give up after one day. No more blogging about what I eat. It bores me. Although tonight I had some pretty good meat loaf.

Ran 1.5 miles on the treadmill at the gym before the tm broke and all the other ones were taken. Then did 4 miles on the eliptical machine. 

Two thing I highly reccomend everybody buy...

1. The new Bruce Springsteen album (that's right, I still say album) called The Promise that came out today.They are all songs he wrote in the late 70s when Springsteen was being sued by his record company and prohibited by court order from recording. So he amassed a huge pile of great songs he never released - until now. The E Street band never sounded better. If you don't like Springsteen I don't know what to say to you.

2. A great new book by Laura Hillenbrand (author of Seabiscuit) called Unbroken. It's the story of Lou Zamperini, one of the great American distance runners of the 1930s and 40s who became an Army Air Corps bomber pilot in World War II. He was shot down over the Pacific and spent days on a flimsy raft in shark infested waters before being captured by the Japanese and then enduring years of torture and mental cruelty. Zamperini is still alive in his mid 90s. The book looks like a great mix of running and history - obviously something I can't resist. This will be a huge bestseller and, no doubt, a movie as well.

Great run tonight. I got a late start because of an after school AP review and so was racing the sundown. I ended up doing nine very hilly miles mostly on trails but was running out of daylight. The temperature also dropped substantially after the sun dropped behind the mountains and so I kept picking up the pace in order to stay warm. Ran the last 2 miles in 11:50 and felt really good.

Read Unbroken whenever I got a spare minute today. Dude ran the 5000 at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and ran the last 400 in 56 seconds en route to a 14:12. The coach in me suspects he had some pacing issues.

am: five miles on the treadmill in 37:30. Followed that with a shortened strength/core workout - push-ups, sit-ups, crunches, dips, pull-ups, lower back extensions etc. Ran out of time, had to make it back to school to teach some kids some stuff. 

pm: 7.25 miles in 49 minutes on treadmill. Started at 8.1 mph and went up .1 every 2 minutes until I ran 10.1 mph from 40 to 42 minutes. Ran a 7 minute cool down.

Today was pretty much a planned day off since I am off all next week. I figured that since I had 9 straight days off I'd want to run on all of them since I'll have few distractions.

Fairly hard treadmill workout today.

1.25 mile warm-up

9.52 miles in 60 minutes - average of 6:17. Started at 9.1 mph and worked up to 10.2 for the last 5 minutes. 10k split was 39:52.

half mile cool down.