Oh Yes, My Forerunner 305!

Well, all is good with the world. My technique worked. I plugged it in and just let it sit for about 12 hours. When I got home from my track workout and visit to 24hour Fitness I looked over at it and saw that wonderful statement, "charging in progress". Awesome, thank you Triune God.

OK, so the track was a pretty tough today. I finished 7x400 and they were not that fun. It has been about 10 days since I've run real hard so I was feeling a little sluggish. It'll be alright I just need about another week of solid running in my town and I'll be back to normal.

Oh No, My Forerunner 305!

OMG! I get to my Friday run this morning (I don't usually run on Fridays, only when I've been slacking during the week) jump out of the car and turn on my trusty Forerunner 305. What? Turn on! Maybe I need to re-push the button. Nope. What the $#@$? OK, so when I get home I'll simply plug it back into the adapter. Nope, that didn't work either. Dag gum it. What is the problem? Will I lose all my saved data? My last ditch hope is the try plugging it back in and hoping that through some electronic miracle it will "fix itself". I'm no idiot, I'm just hopeful. If this does not work then I will capitulate and send it in for repair or replacement. I cringe at the very notion.

5K Racing is Hard but Fun

OK so on April 14 I race in 5k. It's one that is held every year and is good for charity. I am coaching a group of folks who are trying to get faster 5k times this year. They are doing so well. At this race they all improved by about 3 to 4 minutes. Quite amazing, I'm sure they were holding something back at the beginning of the program. Of course, back then they did not know their abilities so our training has really taught them to push themselves outside their comfort zones.

Anyway back to me. I raced my first 5k in over a year. Mainly because last year I trained and finished 6 marathons in 14 months. Now for some that may not seem like much of a feat, but those 6 marathons have brought my total marathons to 7! I'm running one in every state. No, I'm not a member of any of the official 50 in 50 clubs. I'm doing this for me and I can set the rules as I go.

OK back to the 5k. I ran it pretty fast considering it's been so long since I've trained for that distance. I really didn't know what to expect. Now, it was not a PR but was only about 15 seconds from a PR. Wow, that's the first time I did the math on that. But, it's true, only 15 seconds off. The kool thing about this fact is that I felt strong enough to run a little faster during mile 2. Instead of running faster, though, I settled in behind one of my running buddies. Her marathon times are faster than mine and when we run together during the week her easy pace is always faster than mine. Besides that she has much more racing experience than me so I thought it smart to settle in behind her rather than risking running too fast in mile 2 and not having anything left for mile 3.

I may have worn off my welcome for a little bit because when I turned it on near the end she did not stay right with me. I was expecting to see her breeze past me at the last second but she did not. During our race we had another friend come up and start pacing us. He is much faster than both of us and found it quite easy to jump in front and keep the pace. I know I have to get to his pace before I have a shot at qualifying for Boston. I know I've got it in me but I need to lose about 25-30 pounds before he and I are at the same weight. Still working on that, of course.

The only problem is that now I'm 1200 miles away from home visiting a terminally ill family member and I'm not eating right at all. I know my progress has completely frozen even though I've been keeping my running up. I would hardly call it running, more like jogging. 9:20-9:50 pace for 7 miles yesterday. I have not been running yet today but I expect to only run about 5 miles. I'm feeling pretty lazy.

Longest blog yet for me and still no one has been reading them. It's OK. I have not given the location of this blog to any of my friends or family. I half expect someone to find my site on their own and start reading it because something here interest them. We'll keep watching. If in about two more weeks or so no one finds this site then I'll start sending it out to my running buddies so they can have something boring to read when they need to fall asleep.

First real track work out in a while

Well this morning I met some friends at the track for 10x400s. And today was the first time I ever wore my Asics Speedstars. I felt like I did as a kid when I used to get new shoes. Thought I could conquer the world and they're suppose to weigh less than typical trainers, thus lending more opportunity to me running faster. I don't really know about that, I think losing several dozen pounds will help more, but I can dream can't I. The shoes are pretty good but because of my overpronation I had some fairly uncomfortable sensations in the plantar area. I also had my custom orthodics inserted in the shoes so, I may try a track date without them to see if that helps. Any things' worth a try.

Another typical early run around the Lake

Today was another early morning visit to my regular weekend running location. What does today's run have to do with going to Boston? Just another early morning 9.5 mile run. I took it way easy today. In the dark at 6 am preparing, just keeping my legs moving. I'm still looking for the chance to drop more weight so that I can get faster. I have about 40 lbs to go before I feel that I seriously have a shot at being fast enough to qualify for Boston. I need a 3:15 marathon, sounds like an impossible time but, I know plenty of people who have done it. So I press.