Psalm 91:1 NKJV He who dwells in the secret place

I mentioned that I was going to be in the Family Living Newspaper on January 12th and so was our fastrunningblog.com website URL was mentioned. I praised all the great training and advice and accomplishments have come from this site and fellow friends on this site.

Let the word spread about this great site.

 Evening:

Very disappointed that my Cowboys lost, but they did beat themselves with dropped passes and penalties.  They gave the game to the Giants and they can't make any excuses.  I'll they need to look at is their mistakes and missed opportunities. 

You could use running as an analogy for how the Cowboys played,  as a runner you might make a mistake and start out too fast in a race, or you might not hydrate as well, or you didn't push hard enough.  In your training you may not have prepared yourself for the course your going to race in.  When you make these mistakes the race usually will not go your way, but if you stick to the plan with no mistakes you'll usually come out ahead.  The Cowboys didn't do any of this and deserved to lose.

Still in a depression after my Dallas Cowboys lost I got up and ran this morning, after not getting much sleep because I kept thinking about the game and what they could have done different to win.

Being a ex-football player I really get into my team and it hurts when they lost, but life goes on and there's more important things like God, Family and Running. My wife and kids watched the whole game with me and that was special and fun. My wife is great she's not really into football, but she supports me like I support her.

This morning I ran 9.5 miles on a new snowfall at a 6:43 pace in 1:04. I was surprised at my pace, but I was thinking so much about yesterday's game that I really didn't pay attention to my

pace. I did my Olympus hill loop run:

Warmed up the first three miles not really thinking about my pace.

Mile 4: 6:52 mostly uphill and flat and in heavy snow pack. I had to be careful because this area has heavy traffic.

Mile 5: 6:17 Completely downhill ,didn't want to push too hard because it was a little slick.

Mile 6: 6:26 flat some uphill, again very slick so I had to pick my spots to get some good speed in.

Mile 7: 6:18 flat mainly some uphill and downhill, and of course still being careful, but I wasn't careful enough at the end of this run.

Mile 8: 6:33 flat and running on heavy packed snow

Mile 9 6:32 slowing down to end the run on again flat portion of the course.

At the end of my run I turned around near a townhouse parking lot and I did a Sasha, I fell on my hip on some ice and now have a nice big red cherry bruise on the side of my hip. It hurts a little, and my ankle is a little sore, because it got twisted in the fall. I took some Tylenol, hopefully that will help. I will test my hip out on my lunch run.

Lunch:

Hip and ankle feel fine after fall this morning hopefully I'm like Terrell Owens and can become a fast healer.  Ran 5.23 miles at an average 6:30 pace overall on the home Treadmill.  Ran the last mile in 5:45  and over 3 minutes of the last mile at a 5:30 pace.  I watched the game highlights of the games yesterday, and Terrell Owens  crying at the podium.  I have to admit he did become a better team player this year.

I believe to get more anaerobic I need to do more pace miles in 5:30 pace to increase my V02max.  What's the old saying "to get faster you have to run faster" even if its on the treadmill.

Today was 20 degrees with the wind blowing between 27 to 43 mph making the temperature with the wind chill below 10 degrees. The wind was blowing from the Southwest so I thought for the first part I would head into it. This was very hard it would also push me to the side of the road at a stand still. I had my full Underarmour face mask on where I looked like batman or something. My pace stayed in the 7 minute mile range which I really had to battle for. Then after mile 3 I decided to go up Satterfield hill which would give me a tailwind uphill (this is about a 2 hill uphill where the grade gets steeper as you go). After I accomplished the hill I turned West where I would head almost directly into the wind again from mile 7 to mile 9. The wind was blowing directly at me and on the side (south side) The first two miles was downhill, but it didn't matter the wind was so tough it would just knock me and snow was blowing in my eyes where at points in the run I would keep my head down.
I was in survive mode to make it back home. After the two mile down hill I turned Southwest and of course full force into the wind from miles 9 to 12. Very hard to keep a decent pace but I was trying to push it a bit with the icy surface underneath me. I was just trying to get home to get out of this wind.

My Ankle is a little sore not sure from the fall yesterday, or how my stride was awkward being pushed by the wind would mess up my stride and I would kick my ankle. I won't run the rest of the day unless I run with my wife, but the ankle really is nothing to worry about.

Second hilly run in a row, will probably run something different tomorrow.

Overall 12.2 miles at an overall 6:58 pace in 1:25.

Evening

Went to Gold's Gym tonight with my wife for some strength training on the legs. I'm a firm believe this improves your running performance. With high reps. at a lower weights on the hamstrings, quads, and calves. Also I want to try to strengthen my wife's knee and I believe the weights will help.

I also put on my FSB/St George running shirt to show-off the web site and maybe make more connections for the site.

Today's temperature was 3 degrees when I started running with a 10mph wind from SW. With the wind chill it made the temperature below zero. I started out a little faster on my warm-up miles, because I wanted to see if I could do a two mile tempo in this cold weather. I ran each warm-up mile faster than the previous 7:06, 6:55, 6:36, and I was getting icicles on my mustache and eyelids.

I started the tempo and it was directly into the wind at about 7 -10 mph. I kept wiping my eyelids because they would want to shut because of the frost buildup. My mustache was frosted over completely. The eyes just kept bothering me, about every 100m's I would have to wipe them to keep them from shutting. Anyway, the faster I ran the colder it was on my eyes, but I felt good and finished the first mile at 5:49 pace, I then decided its too cold to do anymore tempo miles in this weather, but .25 into the next mile I thought come on you wimp you can fight through another tempo mile. The next mile I would have to make up for the lost pace, and wiping my eyes was becoming real annoying. I finished the mile at 5:56, then I did the next mile at 6:04. I think the tempo would have been fine if I wasn't running into the wind causing my eyelids to frost over. Last mile splits to finish were 6:16, 6:24,6:30, once I slowed down a bit my eyes were not has bad.

I ran 10.2 miles at an overall 6:25 pace in 1:05.

I mentioned my ankle was sore, it's not my ankle its my lower calf muscle right above the Achilles tendon. My calf was getting really sore the last few miles like yesterday. My fall on Monday must have done something. The pain seemed to be located at the muscular tendinous junction.

I will do a slower run on the Treadmill today at lunch to see how it feels between a 7:45 to 7:30 pace.

 Lunch:
No run I decided to let my lower calf rest because of the pain I'm experiencing.  Besides my father came over for lunch so it was meant to be not to run, or I would have at least tempted to do so even though my wife kept telling me to rest it.

I might just stuck to running once a day and see if the pain goes away.  I know the pain started from my fall on Monday.  You have to love the ice.
 

Today I ran in my new Mizuno Precision 8 shoes and I like them. They feel like a good supportive training shoe. My lower right calf is still bothering me like yesterday, but I was able to get through the run. I ran 9.22 miles at an overall 6:49 pace in 1:03 in 10 degree weather, which felt fine because there was only a little bit of wind. I just took the run easy, other than I struggled on mile 3 it felt like I was carry weights around my ankles, but after that mile I seemed fine.

Not sure yet if I will run on my Lunch hour. I'll see how my calf feels. The streets where quite icy but I was careful not to fall. Tonight after work the wife and I are going to Gold's Gym to do strength training on the legs.

Lunch:

I ran on my lunch hour today even though earlier I didn't think I would. The calf still had a nagging pain during the run but it didn't get worst. I ran 4.8 miles at an overall 6:50 pace. The last half mile I ran at a 5:30 pace and it felt easy.

I ran in my new Asics Bandito shoes to test them out and they seem to work great with good support. I'm hoping these will replace my Asics Ohana Racers which are my marathon shoes. I can't believe they discontinued these shoes, because they were the best marathon shoe I've had. I will need to test the Asics Bandito's in a long run if I feel like they can be my marathon shoe. I will continue to ice my calf and hope it will self-heal. If you trust in GOD all things are possible.

Ran an easy aerobic long run this morning in a light snowfall. The temperature was 15 degrees when I started with no wind. I ran 17.2 miles in an 6:56 overall pace. The run was uneventful, and I only tried to fall once. The course was hilly but nothing extreme, no long hills at all. My calf still had some soreness, but not as much. It feels better after the run where I really don't experience as much pain as I did yesterday.  I took my foam roller out last night and did a deep massage or roll on the calf and that really seemed to help. But will see as the day goes and when I wake up tomorrow.

I ran the last three miles faster to get home and to get to work (6:48, 6:12, 6:40). I have to work late tonight to put some hardware in two of our Sun servers so I don't know when I'll feel like running tomorrow. I probably won't be done until after midnight.

Last night well actually this morning I got home from work at 2am and got to bed by almost 3am, because of issues with installing our Sun Gigaswift Quad network cards into our Sun Servers. Not going into details (this is not a blog about computers, and I'm tired of looking at them... oops I'm on one right now) everything installed fine it just took longer than we thought, because of some other issues not related to the install of the network cards.

After about six hours of sleep I go out the door for a run at 9:30am. The weather was 16 degrees with a 14mph wind blowing South. I originally was going to do 8 miles, because I was tired, and a little sore from the strength training and the 17 mile run the day before. Well, everything felt really good and I started out at a faster warm-up pace than I thought I would (7:06, 6:46, 6:36, 6:30,6:26,6:36,6:28,) pretty much at this point I felt really good around a 6:30 pace. The next mile I decided to do a fartlek and it was headed right into the 14 mph wind. The first half of the mile I was running between a 5:27 -5:35 pace and felt good, but the last half the wind gusts started to pick up and it was very hard and I ended the mile at 5:41. I gave a strong effort into the wind but it felt real hard. The last two miles I did a cool-down at (6:46, 6:38). It felt good to get one LT mile in. I think with the weather better maybe I can do a tempo next week and try to stay at a 5:50 pace for the tempo miles.

Totals today:
1:09 time.

6:34 overall pace

10.56 miles