High-Octane

Overall finish – 431 (10,523 total)

Age Finish – 17^th (305 total)

First of all I want to say I had a great day at the race! I went to the Expo Center on Saturday, the day before, and picked up my Bib and Packet. At the Expo I was able to meet up with Der Hammer, who lives in Austin. We have been communicating on the Blog and he has been giving me some great advice and encouragement. BTW…you need to check out his race report…He qualified for Boston…YES…!!! I couldn’t believe how much traffic and how many people were at the Expo and at the race on Sunday. I think there were about 20,000 runners in all (5,000 Marathoners, 10,500 Half Marathoners, and others in the several thousand in a variety of other races). It might have been fun to run with someone but what the heck…I was probably too self conscience about how I was going to do…probably better I was by myself.

At the beginning of the race I lined up at the very end of the “chute”. This was probably a bad decision because for the first three miles I felt like OJ Simpson running through the airport dodging people, jumping over strollers and just trying not to run over the back of someone. I really couldn’t get into a good stride until about the fourth mile. (Actually I later looked at the 5K times for all of the 17 runners that beat me; every one of them had a faster 5K pace than me… I was up to 5 minutes slower; most were 3 or 4 minutes faster than me. I did intend to go out slow but I think this was too slow. Even with this slow start and after 3 miles I realized my heart rate was 163, way higher than I wanted it at this point in the race so I decided to slow down on mile 4 to see if I could make it go down. After running mile 4 in 8:21 I decided my heart rate wasn’t going to go down unless I started walking so I just decided to run by pace and not worry about my heart rate, if I burned out then I burned out! I also think it was about this point in the race that I saw the BIG guy with no shirt, his I-pod strapped to the back of his shorts in front of me. Every time he took a stride about 6 inches of his crack showed…I decided I couldn’t take looking at that ugly sight so drastically picked up the pace to get in front of him and stay there! Around mile 5 or 6 two really hairy butted guys came running into the race group wearing only g-straps and tee shirts…at this point in the race I realized why they call Austin “WEIRD”…! Finally at mile 7 I decide to tune out all of the distractions and JUST RUN. On my 7^th mile I broke the 7:00 pace and realized I was going to be able to finish the race…! On miles 8 and 9 I just cruised at what I felt was a comfortable pace. Since I wanted to finish strong, I decided to slow a little on mile 10 and ran it at 8:11. At the 11 mile spit (Full Marathon or Half Marathon) I joked with the race judge about which way I should go. He encouraged me to take the Full route but at the last minute I decided to go ahead with my Half plan…Ha Ha… Mile 12 was great…!!! They say it has the toughest hill of the course and I was looking forward to it. I think I passed about 20 runners on this hill and a total of about 50 from that point in the race until the end…No one passed me after the 11 mile mark…! This made me feel good. I was tired at the end but quickly recovered and today feel about like I do on any longer run day. Now I have a PR and a goal to beat in two weeks in San Marcos at another Half Marathon. That’s my race report and that’s all I have to say about that!

Livestrong Half Marathon
2/20/2011
Mile	Time	Heart Rate
1	8:02:00	150	Livestrong Half Marathon
2	7:33:00	159
3	7:54:00	163
4	8:21:00	163
5	8:00:00	161
6	7:52:00	162
7	6:59:00	162
8	7:34:00	162
9	7:37:00	165
10	8:11:00	165
11	7:53:00	169
12	7:36:00	173
13	7:37:00	175
13.1	1:07:00	179
Total	102:16:00	165
Pace	7:48:24

1 Corinthians 9:24

"Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize."

Took the day off after the race yesterday...Although I feel fine...

Ha...Ha....I went back and compared a run I did about 6 month ago with this one today...same route, same distance, same pace and I think the weather was about the same...My heart rate has gone down from 150 Avg. to 136 Avg on the same run...! I'm happy about that! That feels like I'm making progress. I'm also happy it's now light during most of my run, I like light. I go to the doctor today for the yearly check-up. I hope we don't have to do the dreaded bootie check. I'm worried this may also be the year for the colonoscopy...Noooooo!!! Anyway, at least I got in my Half Marathon before I was reminded how old I am. Feeling pretty good after the race, I couldn't remember what I was supposed to run this morning (I keep my schedule on my computer at work) so I ran the standard loop (6.6 miles), I was only supposed to run 4...Oh well!

Oh yeah...I think I'm going to get my running partner back on Wednesday, Callie my daughter, may get released to run again after a stress fracture kept her from running for several months.

Here's the details.

2/22/2011
Mile	Time	Heart Rate
1	8:48:00	128	Loop - Slow (Just tried to pace below 9:00)
2	8:55:00	139
3	8:46:00	134
4	8:59:00	140
5	8:52:00	140
6	8:47:00	135
6.6	5:47:00	138
Total	58:54:00	136	Blood Pressure
Pace	8:47:40	53 Deg.	98/60

1 Timothy 4:15
"Be diligent in these matters; give yourself wholly to them, so that everyone may see your progress."

Okay....I really never even thought about post-race recovery,so after the race on Sunday I decided simply to take a day off and then get back into my training on Tuesday. Yesterday (Tuesday) I ran 6.6 fairly easy miles but after that, during the day, I started looking at blogs and articles about allowing your body to rest and recovery. Most all of them say to take several days off...so I decided to take another day off today. One of the articles said to test your recovery by checking your resting heart rate. When your body is fully recovered it will be back to normal. Mine was about 6 beats faster than normal this morning. So now the delimia...what to run the next few days and between now and my next Half Marathon on March 6th...

I'm a little lost in my training right now...after the race. Don't really know if I should rest or run...so I Just Run... Went to the hot/sweaty gym and ran 5 miles at an 8:00 pace just to see how I was feeling. I don't really seem too sore today although I was yesterday, maybe I was a little sluggish feeling. Anyway, I made it through 5 it was about 70 degrees when I finished in the gym (they don't turn on the AC). Ran with 1% incline which raises my heart rate about 8 BPM from flat. Tomorrow I will run 10 fairly slow, on the road, to see how that feels. I've got to get back up to speed before next weekends race.

Here is a link to photos of my race in Austin. Bib # 7661...

http://www.asiorders.com/view_user_event_video.asp?EVENTID=75398&BIB=7661&LNSEARCH=1

2/7/2011
Mile	Time	Heart Rate
1	8:25:00	118	Treadmill MPM
2	8:00:00	140
3	8:00:00	145
4	8:00:00	148
5	7:32:00	152
Total	39:57:00	141	65 Deg.
Pace	7:59:24	1% Incline

Daniel 3:15
"Now when you hear the sound of the horn, flute, zither, lyre, harp, pipe and all kinds of music, if you are ready to fall down and worship the image I made, very good. But if you do not worship it, you will be thrown immediately into a blazing furnace. Then what god will be able to rescue you from my hand?”

WoooooHooooooo......MAJOR ACCOMPLISHMENT...!!!!

After setting my new goal of qualifing for Boston on my first Marathon, I decided I needed to increase my speed quite  bit to feel comfortable about this goal. I went out today and ran my 10 mile hilly route at a determined pace of 7:30. As you can see at the end I was actually 7:23...! After seeing what my heart rate was during the Austin Half-Marathon I realized I now can maintain a higher heart rate for a longer period of time. Even at the pace today my heart rate was better than the race last week. Now, next up, to run below 1:40:00 next weekend at the Moe's Half Marathon then figure out how to train for the Oklahoma City Marathon on May 1st....Any suggestions would be appriciated. (BTW...I think I have to run a 3:35:00 to qualify for Boston).

2/25/2011
Mile	Time	Heart Rate
1	7:34:00	138	10 Mile Loop Backwards
2	7:30:00	157
3	7:02:00	161
4	7:07:00	163
5	7:23:00	165
6	7:45:00	166
7	7:19:00	165
8	7:41:00	166
9	7:15:00	167
10	7:16:00	170
Total	73:52:00	161
Pace	7:23:12	53 Deg.	Max Speed
Max Ascent		892	5.5

Nehemiah 8:10
Nehemiah said, “Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks, and send some to those who have nothing prepared. This day is holy to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the LORD is your strength.”

Ran one loop today, trying to keep at 10 min. pace and keeping my heart rate at an average of 125 bpm. With the hill my pace slowed on a couple of miles to keep my heart rate down. I started looking at what heart rate you should run a marathon and am now getting nervous about my ability maintain a sustainable heart rate over that distance. I don't think the speed or the distance will be a problem but as I studied my heart rate over my last couple of big runs (Austin Half-marathon 7:48 pace & 10 miles here on my hilly course 7:23 Pace) and found that I was running at 85 - 90% (161 bpm) of my oveally capacity. Not sure if I can maintain that over 26.2 miles... Hummm... how do I get my heart rate down to 75% (146 bpm) in two months...? I guess I'll just keep running...

2/26/2011
Mile	Time	Heart Rate
1	9:53:00	119	Loop - Slow (Just tried to pace below 10:00)
2	10:23:00	123
3	9:55:00	121
4	10:21:00	127
5	9:59:00	128
6	9:44:00	127
6.6	6:20:00	130	Max Heart Rate
Total	66:35:00	125
Pace	9:56:29	63 Deg.	135

Psalm 31:6
"I hate those who cling to worthless idols; as for me, I trust in the LORD."