This weekend was a waste,  I sat around the house, watched Football (go Bills) and ate like a good lil' American.  Today was the start of my new week and I ran 3 miles with Ralphie.  It was the first time I ran with him as he is a little younger, but he's 10 months this week to I figure we can start.  He did great as a run buddy.  Somehow, with next to no formal leash training, both Sadie and Ralphie are very good running partners.  I see great distance running careers in their future.

 I've pretty much decided that I'm gonna do Around the Bay 30k at the end of March in Hamilton, Ontario.  I set my goal time as 2:15 (to get a silver medal) which is 7:15 miles.  I think this is doable because it converts (using Purdy Points) to a 19:40 5k or  40:30 10k which I'd hope I would be capable of by then.  Plus the race doesn't warrant extremely long training runs which I'm a fan of so we'll see how the training goes.  I think my sister is gonna do it with me. 

 I better get to training...

To do something fun and exciting I brought my running clothes and shoes to work and ran home from work today.  The route is 1/2 heavy traffic surface streets and 1/2 quiet residential streets so it's ok.  Luckily the whole route has a sidewalk.  It was pretty good and the longest run I've done in a while.  Surprisingly, I ran faster than I though I was going to.  I had no real idea of what pace I'm capable of right now so I just ran at an 7-8 effort level.  I ended up getting home in 43:20 which came out to a 7:45 min/mile pace!!  I was expecting 8:15ish so this is wonderful.  This puts me in great position of hitting my goal for the Turkey Trot 8k of 35 minutes with 3+ weeks of training.

Side note:  I was under 190 pounds this morning.  Lost 20 pounds since mid-May!  Only 30 to go.

Worked 9-5 today at the Pharmacy, it was pretty good but really slow.  When I got home I ran 3.5 with Ralphie.  I'm feeling much faster and can run with general ease now when before it was a serious struggle.  I'm glad my fitness is coming back much faster than I've had hoped.  Yip.  

I have 1 more week of school and then I get to go to New Orleans for a Pharmaceutical Science Conference to present my research.  It's such a crazy place so hopefully it'll be a bunch of fun.  It'll be nice running in warmth too!. 

Ran with Sadie before work.  Nothing too exciting, she was a little pull-y but not too bad.  Watched the NYC marathon for some inspiration.  It's pretty sweet that an American woman got second, but it's too bad Haile was having knee trouble and then dropped out.  Also heard he was gonna retire, kinda a sad way to go but but he is one of the best that ever was.  

Rode my rollers last night for 30 minutes after work.  I didn't want to run so I figured some cross training would be nice.  I did not want to ride my stationary trainer and the rollers are pretty fun.  So I did 20mph base pace with harder 25mph efforts spread out.  It awesome that without the wide resistance to riding outside  you can spin up to 50mph fairly easily.  All the resistance comes from the contact between the rollers and the tyres.  Some of the nicer units have built in resistance units but I have a cheapy model that doesn't.  While the resistance is fairly small, you have to concentrate the whole time to maintain balance so it's also a mental workout.  Using rollers is one time when I wished I had a HRM to track myself.  I kept myself at about 85% max HR but it was cumbersome to check it while riding.  

Lots of novice bike people are scared of rollers becasue they do look intimidating and some people have trouble with them.  Luckily, even with my poor balance, I picked it up fairly quickly and I like to a ton more than riding a trainer.  Plus they help your pack riding skills!

Ran a loop around the house after work.  I tried to push it to get a little bit of a threshold workout.  I'm really not a fan of the time change.  It's dark when I get out of work, the dogs are still waking up at their normal time (which is now an hour early), and I'm sleeping funny.  Combine this with my diet and a slump at work and I've been extra cranky the last few days.

I saw this thing on the internet, the 200 squat and 100 push-up challenge.  It claims to get you to these goal in 6 weeks.  I'll give it a shot and see if I can complete it by Christmas.  I have no doubt I'll have the squat done (I could probably do it now) but the push-ups are gonna be a challenge as I have no upper body strength.  If anyone has tried/completed it I'd be interested to hear what you thought about the program.  Thanks! 

Rode the bike trainer for 30 minutes tonight in the basement, nothing too exciting

I'm in New Orleans now for my science convention.  Got it last night on an uneventful trip.  Due to the time change I woke up at like 6 this morning and went for a run.  Ran for 33minutes around the french quarter. It's pretty hot out so I'm glad I went early.  Nothing exciting.  The French Quarter is very pretty/old and it's fun to run around

I didn't get a chance to run during the day because of all the meetings I had (from 8am-8pm) so I ran on the treadmill at the hotel before bed.  Just a quick 3 miles to get to work off all the yummy fried and cheese filled food I've been eating.  I've def been loosing poundage becasue my suits are fitting way better since I was last wearing them in Sept!!

I'm a little flustered at this meeting, I want to go hang out in the evenings but none of my friends want to and I'm not one to wander around alone and meet new people so I just end up doing nothing at night.  It's especially lame becasue the French Quarter is so much fun at night, It's great with the drinks and the music and the vibe.  So, if any bloggers live in NOLA and want to hang out, hit me up!  Maybe one night I'll suck it up and go out alone.  Social Distortion is playing Tuesday at the House of Rock, and while I'm not a huge fan of theirs it'll prob be a cool concert and something to do.

ran in the garden district before I had to head over to the convention center.  The garden district is super hip looking and someplace I'd totally live/visit/hang out.  Did a nice pace of 7:26.  My dress shoes tore up my heals when I was wearing them the other day so my socks are a bloody mess!.  I really hate blisters, oh well. 

Still in New Orleans for 1 more day and ran after my conference on St. Charles Pl.  It's this cool street with a median that the trolley uses.  The median is nice grass and I must have seen 15+ runners on it at like 5pm which was pretty cool, just gotta make sure you don't get ran over by the trolley.  Did it in 36min.  I think I'm in good shape for the Turkey Trot next week.  It's back to Buffalo tomorrow to reality which is sad. Oh well

Back in Buffalo and I ran in the evening.  Did a fast paced 4.5 miles in 31:30 to get ready for the Turkey Trot Thursday.  Felt pretty good and but I way overdressed for the weather so I ended up pretty overheated.  I think I'll be in good shape for the race.

I also started my 100 push-up and 200 squat in 8 weeks training.  I took the initial tests and did 18 push-ups and 70 squats, quite the disconnect between then.  I think I'm going to have to work on the upper body strength a lot more.  The cycling really keeps my legs strong. 

I'm taking the week off as a staycation,  I really haven't had a week off to relax in several years so it'll be nice.  We were going to stay home for the week and have Thanksgiving by ourselves like we prefer to do but my stepdad was having stomach pain and they found a lump on his pancreas.  It's 50% chance it's cancer so we are gonna go home Thursday and Friday back to Albany for moral support/whatever.  They should know what it is w/in 2 weeks.  We'll see

Ran after dinner around with Ralphie.  Very windy and chilly.  My quads are super sore from doing the initial test for the 200 squat challenge.  

This is my first real race I've done in 2 years and I was kinda excited.  I ran this race 2 years ago in 41:30 and I was a little disappointed.  I've been running a lot more since May and I was excited to see how I'd do and set an ambitious goal of 35 minutes.

Course: It's a point to point 8k which starts in the North of the city and is a straight shot ending downtown.  It's fairly flat but has some long false flats and slight uphills during the first 3 miles which can be draining.  This year the race hit its cap of 12500 registrants making it the largest race ever held in Buffalo.

Pre-Race/Weather:  It's chilly and about 40 out.  The sky was gray and it fluctuated between drizzle and slight rain all day.  I was hoping that the heavy rain would hold out and it did.  We got up early and dropped the car off at the end so we wouldn't need the shuttle bus to get home and went to the start.  I went to line up at the 7min/mile pace line and it was PACKED.  If I could have one wish, it would not be world peace or money it would be that people would line up correctly at the starts of races.  Where I was standing maybe 10% of the people could actually run 1 7 minutes mile let alone 5, I had a 6 year old next to me and some older ladies.  It's beyond frustrating and I have NO idea why they do it..

Race:  It's off and the first couple minutes I'm dodging people but it soon opens up and I can run.    The crowd support and people are awesome and there are crazy customs including a daisy chain of 7 turkeys.  Miles were 7:16, 7:26, 7:18, 7:20, with a finishing mile of 7:02.  Finish was 688 of 11044 using the gun time and 720 with net time.  Gun time was about 30 seconds slower.  Got 84 of 670ish in my age group. 

I was moderately happy with my finish and was only off my goal by 90sec.  It would have been a little too much to push down to 7min/miles especially with only running 12 miles a week.  I gotta run more days a week and more start building up miles.   I've scheduled a 5k in about a month, we'll see how I improve for that.  Aiming for 21:30.  I gotta do some faster paced runs to get used to running sub 7s.

Ran an easy 3 miles on the treadmill (8 min/miles) after a long day of shopping.  Avoided the insanity and got to the mall at about 9am, did about 85% of our X-mas shopping and checked out a bunch of stuff.  Showing up at about late morning is great becasue all the nice sales are going and while it's crowded, it's much more calm than that door-buster retarded-ness.  Also picked up some nice running tights for myself at the ADIDAS outlet.

Ran an easy 4ish miles tonight after Christmas tree gettin'.  Ended up with a nice white pine. It's soft and purdy

Rode the rollers (20 mph average) after work for 30 minutes while watching Ricky Bobbie.  Fell off twice trying to stand and when trying to go hands-free. 

The field mouse is fast but the owl sees at night!

Ran on the treadmill after dinner, I wanted to run after dinner but it was a crap storm of snow and rain and cold outside.  Did an easy first mile (8:00)  and moderately fast second (7:20) and then the same slow and fast split for the last mile.  Total time was about 26 minutes.