Wow - this is kind of crazy...

My putting screws in shoes for running video has over 600 hits most of them just recently when I found out that Runners World and New Balance have moth added links to it on their sites.  It has been getting about 200 hits a week for the last two weeks.  Crazy - that is more hits than all my other YouTube videos put together.

Boxing Day Run

Just finished an easy four miler on the treadmill at Ft. Richardson with Michelle, Chris, and Rachel.  It was cake and nice to run together with some of us who are training for the marathon.  Or at least as together as you can get, running on four different treadmills watching the Olympic Ski trials on TV...  Is not as hot as the Gucci gym and the track was a lot cooler and better for the after run cool down.

It's A Mad Mad Mad World. ...and a 12 mile run.

Today's run did not turn out at all as I expected.  I have been trying to avoid the lousy feeling that I had after the last long run and had a strategy all mapped out, and it worked!  Well, it worked great for the first eight miles then we got kicked out of the gym.  Unknown to us, the Gucci Gym closes at 7 PM.  Fabio came by and said we had five minutes until they close, just as I clicked mile eight and a bird hit him on his head.  Austin was playing in a basketball tournament and a grocery store trip got us to a late start - I thought the gym would be open until 9 PM.  Come on folks, this is not Rexburg!  Even the Army Buckner gym closed at 7 PM!  We ended up doing the last four miles on the dark icy streets of Eagle River.

Now for the good news.  All things considered - it was a great run.  I felt great, my strategy worked, reasonable splits (and I ran negative splits to boot!).  I never got sore or burned out.  I love the Garmin - it did an excellent job logging my miles on the treadmill and outside, logged splits every mile, and downloaded it all to my Mac.  Good times!  And the cherry on top - - - the spikes (screws) in our shoes worked great the last four miles!!!  The roads were shiny packed snow, temperature was 8 degrees, and it was fun finishing outside.  We ended up finishing a little after 9 PM.  I am not near as sore or burned out like the 10.5 miler two weeks ago.  And probably, as you can tell, the runners high is in full swing.

"What leeeeevveeeelll you on?"

Did a short workout with Michelle and Deja today at the Alaska Club.  I am used to the outside or running at Ft. Richardson where style is not as big of thing.  I had on New Balance shoes, Nike socks, Reebock shorts, Adidas shirt, and Garmin watch.  Good thing I was not wearing my CamelBack.  Deja got a 12 day membership to the A Club to do some of her marathon prep up here in Arkansas.

We have over two feet of snow over the last couple of days and the temps are supposed to be in the single digits the next few days which will make some major decision making for Saturdays run.  The run today was good - I did it slow so I could recover enough for the 12 miler on Saturday.  On Tuesday I did a run with three goals, that I met, but I was pretty sore for a couple of days.  It is interesting how much you feel like jumping when you get off the treadmill to walk for the cool down.  I think it is because I have the incline at 1% while I run - but I am not sure.

-Tundra Bob

10.5 Miles!!!!

Chelsea and I did the 10.5 mile run on Saturday along the Provo River Trail. It was so nice not to have to stop for cars and stop lights! And thankfully it hadn't snowed yet. That was probably our last run free of snow for a while now. We did the run for 5 minutes walk for 1 minute and that helped tremendously. I never felt winded the entire time. However, my legs got so tired. I did notice though that once they reached this certain point, they never got worse, just stayed at that level, so I guess that was good. I never felt like I literally couldn't take one more step. We reached Utah Lake and were like, YEah! But the realized we had to go all the way back, so going back was harder to motivate ourselves. I noticed that if we ran a bit faster, instead of a slow jog, the momentum took my legs instead of me having to physically pick one up after another.

I realized I only have to run a short run in Alaska, so thats nice (only because it will be so cold!) I then do like 14 or something in CA, where hopefully the weather will be better!

Anyway, it was the longest Chelsea or I had ever run, so that was great. I did feel a little discouraged right when we were done because I couldn't imagine running 1.5x what I just had, but I am feeling better about it now.

10.5 miler.

Did the 10.5 mile run today with Michelle.  We got a late start so ended up finishing in the dark.  We did it outdoors at the Ft. Rich track which was nice - a lot better than the treadmill.  We both feel pretty sore now.  It was 22 degrees when we started which was not bad.  I closed the drawstring on the bottom of my coat which stopped the stovepiping and I did not get cold at all.  I even took my gloves off after a few miles.  The first mile was a little tough, which it usually is.  Felt great for the first five miles.  I started zoning out around mile six and was in a grove until mile eight and the last few miles were pretty tough.  We finished them though.  We were both starving afterward and could not wait to eat some dinner.  We feel pretty sore now and will probably be getting to bed early.

Running in cali and so forth...

Ran around the Rose Bowl in Cali during Thanksgiving break. Did a 6 mile run (twice around the course) on Wednesday and some interval workouts (5 1-mile intervals) on Saturday. It was a good course, and it was nice to run in warmer weather (it was in the high 60's-70's the whole time while we were there).

Ran a 5:56 mile on Monday, back here in Provo. Steadily increasing. I'm going to up my normal runs to 8 miles now, I've been running my seven mile course in 52 minutes which is where I wanted to be. So things are going well! I've been looking at the time I'll have in Alaska for the break and trying to decide what kind of runs I want to do up there, we will see...