I Think I'd Benefit from a Running Club

After a couple days off this week from the plan—as well as missing my last 2 long runs—I'm gearing up for tomorrow's long run/Nike+ Human Race.

Today's run went great. At first.
As you can plainly see on the right, I was cruising along under and around a 10 minute mile pace for a while there, which is pretty damn good for me.

But somewhere around 2 and a half miles I just quit. My proclivity for what Vanilla at Half-Fast calls "The Quitter" expresses itself once more. I just quit.

The Rundown

♠ The scenery was great; I ran along Mission Bay in San Diego just at sunset, which has a nice lighted, paved path along the water.
♠ I love San Diego, so the warmth and wetness of the evening air was pretty fantastic. It was a wee bit warm, which I don't do well with. But not that warm.
♠ The legs felt great.
♠ The lungs felt great.
♠ The heart felt great.
♠ I did have to run through quite a bit of dizziness early on (which I seem to get quite a bit when my sleep cycle is jacked up—which is very much is right now).
♠ I wasn't running to Hella Sound stuff; having recorded pretty intensely this week, I wanted to step away from what I was working on to get a little objectivity and a little perspective—something I generally do with creative projects. As a result, the iPod was on shuffle, which does have a potentially negative effect.

But shit, I should be able to knock out 3 miles with my eyes closed.

To this I say WTF.

I'm thinking I might benefit from joining a running club. Lord knows there's plenty of them in San Francisco. I have about a month before the San Jose Rock & Roll Half-Marathon, so if the group runs fit well with my training schedule, it's on like Donkey Kong. After the R&R, I'll adjust my plan to accommodate group runs regularly.

Long post, I know. Was it good for you?

08-08-08 Virtual Olympics Race: 8.34 Miles in 2 Parts

Notes of a Non-Runner had the excellent idea of organizing an 8 mile blog race in time for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. I wanted to hop in and join the fun.

Also, as luck would have it, I was slated to run 7 miles today, so I figured "what the hell, why not slap another one on for an even 8?"

As I Tweeted earlier in the day, I set out to run my 8 miles in the early afternoon on a beautiful San Francisco day. It was sunny and warm, which is pretty unusual for us. I figured the breeze would keep me cool enough to finish.

Boy was I wrong.

@LosBee and I hit Kezar by about 2:30pm to find the track was closed—Kezar Stadium was hosting Irish Football today, which is a fascinating sport in its own right. There's a large outside loop around the track paved in asphalt which was still open to us, so we decided to go ahead with the run.

@LosBee is recovering from finishing her first half marathon, and wasn't looking to put on any real miles—she just wanted to get out and stretch her legs a bit.

I knew I was in trouble when I had to stop for water at mile 2. It was just too warm for me, and the sun was drying me out way too fast. We both stopped when I was into my my 3rd mile and decided it would be prudent to hang it up and cool off. We had a fantastic time watching Irish Football, however, regardless of our inability to figure out the rules.

Mastodon's singer/guitar player exorcising some personal demons on stage

I still wanted to join in the 08-08-08 Virtual Olympics fun, though, so after some late-lunch tacos and watching some Olympic coverage, I set back out to finish up the 7 miles I was scheduled for and the 8 total I wanted to achieve.

But I have to admit, I was a little ticked off with having failed earlier in the day, and I tackled the miles with aggression.

Normally my runs are multi-purpose: I run to run, but I also run to "road test" the songs we have in development at Hella Sound. It's a great part of the job, and I get to take things out and see what gets me pumped, what keeps me going, and what doesn't work. I take what I learn on the road back to the studio and incorporate it into the music.

Well, like I said, I was a little peeved about having to go back out and run again. And presently we don't have anything that's ready to be road tested at Hella Sound that was aggressive enough to match my foul mood. So I cued up Mastodon's album Leviathan and hit San Francisco's Marina.

I pounded the snot out of those 6 miles. My out-and-back route is very similar to this one on Map My Run. It had cooled off quite a bit (it was about 7pm when I started), and the breeze off the bay was nice.

One of the best things about running the Marina/Crissy Field route—aside from having the Golden Gate Bridge in your sights on the way out—is that you get to take part in one of San Francisco's best running traditions: high-fiving Hopper's Hands. You can read more about Hopper's Hands here, but sufficed to say it's one of my favorite little things to do when I'm out running here.

Since so many people run with their dogs, someone also created a matching pair of paws for four-legged runners to touch when they hit the turnaround point. Interestingly, it looks like it gets some wear, although I've never seen someone touch paws to it.

Too cool.

Here's to finishing the 08-08-08 Virtual Olympics race! I had to fudge the numbers a bit—since it was split across 2 runs—but I think my 8 miles clock in at 1:24:53. Sloooooowwwwww ;)

Mastodon photo courtesy of www.mastodonrocks.com.

Hopper's Hands photos courtesy of misocrazy on Flickr.

Break Out the Gloves

Today was a 5 mile run and upper body weights day. It was a great day, even counting the failures.

My legs felt great—I felt great—for the first half of the run. I think incorporating weightlifting has been really, really good. Unfortunately, somewhere around the turnaround point in Crissy Field I started getting gassed. The headwind was pretty stiff on the way out, and while it keeps you nice and cool, it makes things a wee bit tougher. I was looking forward to enjoying a tailwind helper on the way back, but unfortunately it wasn't quite enough to help me finish the whole 5 miles. I ended up walking the last 600 meters or so.

Weaksauce.

Really, I was gassed and I was dragging, but I could have done it. I wasn't sore, I wasn't injured, and my body was able to finish. My mind just gave out. I chickened out. Wussed out. Weak.

This has been a problem for me for the last few months. I just gotta get my head in the game, and I believe the weightlifting is really helping. This stuff doesn't happen over night, and now's when I'm putting my time in to make it happen.

Weights went well, too. Well, sorta.

Bench press is an old buddy of mine, and I took today as an easing-back-in day. I took it light: 1 warm up set with just the bar, then 3 sets of 8 reps @ 95, 115 and 135. Easy peasy.

Pull-ups went as badly as predicted. I'm reasonably strong, it's just that I'm too damn heavy right now to rattle off a bunch. Or, for that matter, one. So after some attempts at the bar, I did 3 sets of cable lat pull-downs at a high-ish weight, and in the process tore the bejesus out of my delicate little hands.

As it turns out, guitar fretboards, laptop keys and Mac trackpads don't build the type of callouses you need to do pull-ups. Next Wednesday I'm breaking out the old weightlifting gloves. In the meantime, @LosBee will be pleased to learn that my wedding ring is now permanently embedded into my ring finger as a result of my workout today.

Pretty much the same thing happened with still dips. I did 3 sets of maybe 4-5 weak little dips, but I didn't go down far enough for it to be a true workout. This will change over time as well.

So, some failures, but all of a very encouraging sort. I now know where I need to work and have a mark to grow from.

As a side note, The Art of Manliness was nice enough to cite Hella Sound today in discussing music for working out. While I didn't necessarily agree with Cameron's selection of music, I think it's a great topic. The comments got pretty brutal, though, and things got a little rough in there. Hats off to Cameron, tho, for putting together the post. His home blog is frequently one of the most insightful and thought-out personal blogs I know of.

We also posted a nice little interview with Steve Speirs on Hella Sound today, the man who brought us the One Hundred Push Ups Challenge that everyone and their brother is doing. He's a super cool guy and it was fun talking to him.

Image courtesy of Georgio on Flickr

Hear Ye, Hear Ye

What the world
needs now
is blog
sweet blog
it's the only thing
that there's just too little of

In looking around I've realized that while the Internet may groan under the weight of yet another runner's blog, it will not break.

As such, I'm casting my lot with the ambulatory blogosphere, and make this solemn pledge: This blog will not break the Internet.

Like most everybody else (and by that I mean the many folks in yonder blog roll →), I'll use the blog to keep track of my workouts, plans and goals.

This is not my first or only foray into the world of blogging—or runner blogging. My day (and evening, and sometimes late-night job) is at Hella Sound, which is a provider of good, original music for running. Hella Sound has a blog, too. The main difference being the blog at Hella Sound talks mostly with other people's running, training and the like.

This blog, however—this Slow Mofo—will be about me and my running. Well, that's the plan anyway.