Training Starts Tomorrow...

... always tomorrow. As of late there’s been a severe lack of running going on around here. Between vacationing in St. Lucia, camping trips, entertaining guests from the UK, birthday parties, BBQs and a ton of other things it seems like I never have time to run. Of course it doesn’t help that when I have had time to run I’ve chosen to sit on the couch instead, I guess I can’t blame it all on scheduling problems.

Since brute force of will power seems to be failing me, I’ve decided that I need to sign up for a fall half marathon. Nothing motivates like that ‘oh crap I’m not ready for this’ feeling that you get from seeing a race looming on the calendar that you’ve already paid for. I actually wanted to run the Denver Rock ‘n’ Roll Half this year but it’s less than 6 weeks away and Oh crap, I’m not ready for that! It’s also $115 which lands somewhere between excessive and extortion, both topics that I know plenty about as a banker.

If you know of a good fall marathon (preferably late fall) then let me know in the comments because training starts tomorrow!

Morning Running

Those of you who have been following me for any length of time know that I’ve had an on again off again (and on again and off again) relationship with morning running that is kinda back on again. The good thing about morning running is that when I get home from work I can lounge about and do nothing. The benefit of evening running is that it allows me to repeatedly abuse the snooze button in the morning. It’s probably not a good sign for me that the best part of my day is the part where I’m not running. So, why am I running in the mornings again? I’m glad you asked.

One of the things that happens as you get older other than the fun new games you get to play like ‘gray hair or sun bleached hair?’ and ‘hey, I’ve never noticed hair growing there before’ is that your evenings seem to fill up with all manner of family activities that prevent you from running. My kids are 6 and 7 and they love sports and I love that they love sports but you know what I don’t love? Practices. Just call me Allen Iverson. They’re 21 months apart which means that they play at different age levels and have different practice nights and we move from basketball to soccer to baseball to flag football to indoor soccer and then back to basketball to start ALL OVER AGAIN. We actually had them convinced not to play basketball this season and I was looking forward to some more me time but then their school friends convinced them that they should play. It just doesn’t stop, and more importantly it’s really interfering with daddy’s running. And don’t even get me started on the concerts, plays, parent teacher conferences and puppy training classes that fill up the rest of the evenings.

If I don’t get a run in first thing in the morning then it’s not happening and I’m not going to lie, there have been plenty of days lately where it hasn’t happened. Of course with daylight savings coming up next weekend it will start to get easier to run in the evenings (read: easier to hit the snooze button). Morning running, ha! More like mourning running, amiright?

Goals for 2011

You know what comes naturally after a year in review post?  A Goals for the upcoming year post!  Hooray for easy posts!  You take the goals you missed last year and repost them again, then you take the goals you accomplished and make them a little tougher and bingo bango bongo you’ve got yourself another post!  Some people might think that they should all go in the same post but that’s ludicrous and I’ll tell you why; then you only get one post out of it!  Look at me, I have 2 posts out of this now, and that’s without even counting the next post wherein I tell you HOW I’m going to accomplish all these new recycled goals.  You have to work hard to be as lazy as I am.

This year I’m actually going to try something different in my approach.  I’m not going to have any goals for 2011. (Note: Do not try this line with your boss it goes over about as well as it would if you tried to switch my regular coffee to Folgers - blech!)  However, since I’m the boss on this blog I have the final say, and I say: No goals in 2011.  I’ve never really been motivated by writing down my goals and setting high expectations for myself.   I’m more of a fly by the seat of my pants and see where we end up kind of guy.  This year I’m going to be a free spirit, just blowing wherever the wind takes me. I’ll still run, I’ll still work hard to get faster but I’m not going to beat myself up for failing to reach arbitrary goals that I set while high on the enthusiasm of a fresh start just because I had to switch out my calendar with a new one.  (Note to self: switch out your calendar with a new one.)

2011 is all about low expectations and no failures.  It will be the year of aiming low and surprising myself.  I’ll not be disappointed.  Perhaps my motto this year will be ‘nothing to aim for, nothing to miss.’  Having no goals this year sure made this ‘Goals for 2011’ post much easier to write although it’s going to make writing a year in review post a lot harder at the end of the year. 

The Denver Half Approaches

I can honestly say that I’ve never been less prepared for a race than I am for the Denver Half Marathon this Sunday. The good news is that I’ve never been more prepared for failure than I am this time around. For the first time ever I won’t be going into a race with a time expectation or a goal in mind. Given my lack of preparation for this race I think it would be futile to have big expectations.

For me the ‘fun’ in racing has always been in achieving faster race times and in proving that I can perform at a certain (albeit mediocre) level. The race itself has never been the part that I enjoyed. The race itself is a punishing, physical exertion that I endure to get to the fun part, which is stopping my watch at the finish line sooner than I have ever stopped it previously. It’s the happy ending, if you will. The happy ending is realizing that I have accomplished what I set out to accomplish, that I have run faster than ever before. The happy ending is the improved race time which is the payoff of all the hard work that I put in during the weeks and months leading up to the race. However, since there has been little to no hard work leading up to this race it would be idiotic to believe that there is going to be a happy ending.

My challenge this Sunday will be to enjoy the race. I’m not looking for a happy ending, I’m looking for a happy beginning and middle. Instead of waiting until the end of the race to be happy, I’ll be happy right from the get go. Prematurely happy, if you like. On Sunday I will run just for the love of running, I’ll run for the camaraderie, and for all that other sappy, feel good crap that other people talk about. Perhaps it will be the shot in the arm that I need to get myself back on track. At a minimum it should result in some good race pictures, at least that’s what the Chic Runner says will happen when you ‘run for fun.’

I have no doubt that the future holds more PRs for me. I am certain that there will be many more races where I endure the pain to capture the glory, but Sunday will not be one of them. Sunday I will run to enjoy running. I’ll be the goofy idiot that’s smiling and chatting with anyone who will listen. I’ve always wanted to be that guy.

Hey! What’s This? A New Post?

In case you haven’t noticed I haven’t been around lately. I haven’t posted, I haven’t commented on any of your blogs, heck, I haven’t even read any of your blogs. You see I have this thing called a day job and lately things have been pretty crazy. Good crazy not bad crazy. All the hard work and effort that I put into blaming other people for my mistakes and taking credit for their good ideas is finally paying off. So during the past week and a half I’ve had to do most of my blogging late at night after I get home from work and... well... you can see how well that’s worked out for me. I kept telling myself “good gracious Ian, you’ve got to write a post tonight after work. It’s been 3 days since your last post!” I’m so polite when I talk to myself, but then I never actually wrote any posts and when 3 days turned into 9 days I said to myself “listen you lazy sack of maggot-riddled-crap! You get busy writing a post tonight and get it posted or else you’re going to lose readers!” But apparently I don’t respond well to yelling and threats either because that just made me drink more during the evenings. To be honest with you guys I just didn’t feel like writing at all after work and I was wondering how I was ever going to write another post again because frankly I’ve been too busy with work to write a coherent post at the office.

Then just this morning, totally out of the blue, I pushed aside some pressing work issues and directed all my calls to voice mail. I opened up blogger and for no particular reason I just started typing. I typed to the end of the line and when I got there I thought maybe I’d type to the end of the paragraph. Now that I’m this far I figure I’ll just type a whole blog post. I’m like the Forrest Gump of typing. “You might not believe me if I told you, but I can type like the wind blows.” I’m back, baby! Just in time so that no one will have noticed my increased productivity around the office and won’t come to expect it of me.

You’re all probably wondering what happened to the lack of motivation that I talked about two weeks ago. Well, my plan worked. My laziness has been contagious and Candis has not been running or training much either. Welcome to the dark side. Anyway, with the Denver Half Marathon a mere two weeks away, we both needed to force ourselves to do a long run this past Saturday and I came up with an idea that I thought was brilliant (because it was my idea). Candis got up early on Saturday morning (brilliant!) made bacon for breakfast (brilliant!) then she got in the car and drove 12 miles away from home. She parked the car and ran home. Meanwhile I slept in (brilliant!) ate some bacon (brilliant!) and waited for her to return. When she arrived home, I ran 12 miles out to the car to pick it up. There was no quitting because the fastest way to be done was to get to the car. Next time we do this, I’m going to ask her not to tell me where the car is, instead she can just give me her Garmin (pbtn) and I’ll retrace her steps. It will be like geocaching. (Note: I have absolutely no clue what geocaching is, but using a Garmin to find your car sounds to me like something that would fit the definition of geocaching.) Besides you know how women are with cars and directions, it just makes more sense to put your faith in a Garmin (pbtn) than in any woman’s sense of direction, amiright?

Well, that’s probably enough for today, someone down the hall just had a great idea and I need to pass it off as my own to upper management. Time to get back to work. Ahhh, who am I kidding, I’ve got a boatload of blog posts to get to in my Google Reader and sarcastic comments to leave. I understand someone had an 18 minute marathon PR while I was gone. Of course, I’ll probably choose to focus on the fact that he still missed his goal by 4 minutes and change. FAIL much?

Failure in the Making

There’s been little running as of late and even littler caring. Shocking, right? I don’t know if it’s the product of a sub-par year of racing or if it’s just me being lazy. Probably the latter. With the Denver Half Marathon less than 4 weeks away now, I’m on a collision course with failure. The light at the end of the tunnel is actually a train and I can’t even muster up the fear to step off the tracks. Usually the closer I get to race day the more dedicated I become to my training but I can’t remember the last time I went out for a long run and I can’t even go look it up on my running log because lately I really haven’t bothered to write my runs down.

Unfortunately those crafty folks at the Denver Half Marathon suckered me in several months ago with the early bird discount otherwise I probably wouldn’t even consider running it. I’m thinking that my goal for the race should just be to try to avoid another PW at the half marathon distance this year but even that seems a little naïve. Even Candis’ taunts that she’s going to beat me haven’t scared me into training harder, in fact, the other day I told her that I don’t really give a crap how slow my time is and it’s completely true. 3 hours and 10 minutes, here I come!

It will make for an entertaining race report, as Candis likes to remind me: “It’s much funnier on the blog when you fail.” I’m sure when it comes time to write the race report I’ll be befuddled as to why I continue to get slower this year, but you can all point me back to this post and remind me that I haven’t been running nearly enough to expect good things at the Denver Half Marathon. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining about getting slower (at least not in this post) I’m just putting it out there that I don’t feel like running much right now, and I’m OK with that.

Who you should be concerned for is Candis, because apparently laziness loves company just as much as misery does; I’ve been trying to talk her into skipping her training runs, and I know what her weaknesses are. While she’s trying to get ready to run in the evening, I’m pouring her a glass of wine. When she gets up to run on Saturday morning, I suggest breakfast at LePeep. I may be fixing to go down hard, but I’m taking as many people with me as I can. I’m like the Pied Piper of laziness. Speaking of which, why don’t you skip your training run today. You’ve earned a much needed break from running and I’m sure there’s something good on TV tonight. (Wipeout anyone?) In fact, you know what? Go ahead and take the rest of the week off. You probably deserve it, I know I do.

Go Away! Want Sleepy!

This morning I would like to tell you all about the importance of a good night’s sleep: It is very important to get a good night’s sleep. How important? Well let’s consult the crudely made sleep vs. probability of running graph that I just concocted in MS Paint and find out.

Fascinating stuff huh? On Monday night I managed to get roughly 4½ hours of sleep. Naturally, when I got home from work on Tuesday I was exhausted and knew from my handy dandy probability graph that there was only a 20% chance of me actually running. As it turns out, I didn’t run on Tuesday. It seems that there have been a lot of late nights over the past few weeks due to some extracurricular activity (which makes it sound way more intriguing than it is) and that has really affected my running. If I’m tired when I get home from work there’s little chance of me running and when I do get myself out the door my pace usually suffers. I guess there is something to be said for making sure you get enough sleep.

Recently, some of you have noted that I used to be a morning runner and have asked why I’m not one anymore. The answer is pretty simple. Back in the days when I was enjoying morning running (or more accurately enjoying not having to run after work) I didn’t have to be in the office until 8 or 8:30. Plenty of time to get in a run. Lately I’ve been getting to the office a lot earlier (so much for banker’s hours) and I frequently work from an office that is much farther from my house which means that if I wanted to get in a short run at my lumbering pace I’d need to wake up somewhere around 4am and as I’m sure you’re all painfully aware there is no such thing as 4am. So essentially it’s not even physically possible for me to run in the mornings anymore.

Note: I’m sure that there are some of you out there that get up and run at 4am on a regular basis or who have to leave for work earlier than I do and you’re welcome to call me a sissy, pantywaist in the comments, you’ve earned it. Regardless, I won’t be getting up at 4am to run before work, that’s just not my style. What I will be doing is trying to get more sleep. This is going to require me to not watch so much TV in the evenings... hmmmm... that doesn’t sound like the answer. Maybe I should just start showing up later for work or taking more naps at my desk during the day. Yes, that sounds much more doable.

12 Miles

If you’re training for a half-marathon 12 miles is a long run. If you’re running Boston in 2 weeks 12 miles means you’re in taper mode. If you’re training for a marathon that’s more than 2 weeks away then 12 miles is probably a midweek run but if you’re me, 12 miles is the combined total mileage that you’ve run in the last 2 weeks. That’s right, in the last 2 weeks I’ve run exactly 12 miles. I probably deserve an award or something. During the past 2 weeks I’ve wondered why I’m not getting any faster and why my fitness is not improving like it should. I’ve complained about gaining a few pounds and acted like I couldn’t figure out what might have caused it.

The funny thing is that my lack of mileage these past 2 weeks hasn’t been due to a lack of motivation. Life just keeps getting in the way and I’ve been genuinely frustrated at being unable to find the time to run. These past two weeks I’ve been invited to family dinners, I’ve had to work late, I’ve been invited to bachelor parties, I’ve committed to dinner plans with friends and on my free nights I’ve watched mother nature step in with harsh wind and snow storms. I know, I know, cry me a river. I’m so popular that I don’t have the time to run in all those pairs of free shoes that I’ve been given. Woe is me. I’m sure you’re all feeling desperately sorry for me, but that’s not my intent. No, the intent of this post is to put everyone on notice.

If you want to spend time with me in the evening then you’d better schedule it after my run. You want me to help you with something on Saturday? Not until after my run. You want me to make an appearance at your party? Don’t schedule it during one of my runs. From now on, running takes priority over all extracurricular events and I’m not working late on nights that I have a run planned either. I’m a banker for crying out loud, since when did bankers EVER work late? Not since they needed to get their runs in, that’s when.

This goes for my family too. You need Daddy to fix that toy that you broke? Not until after my run. You need a ride to the hospital because you broke your arm falling off something you shouldn’t have been standing on in the first place? Call an ambulance, Daddy has to run. You need your husband to fix the toilet that won’t stop running? Not until after he stops running. You can’t control your raw, animalistic desires and want to rip off your husband’s clothes the second he gets home from work? . . . I guess my run can wait an extra 3 minutes. I wouldn’t want to seem obsessive about this whole ‘running takes priority’ thing.

The Track Coach

I don’t really have a post this morning because I spent several hours playing around on this cool new site instead of composing a post for you. You may have already seen the site if you follow The Bloggess or Cranky Fitness or any number of other blogs that were quicker on the uptake than I was. Basically, the site allows you to create movies using characters like the ones you see below and it’s just plain fun to see what kinds of inappropriate things you can make them say.

My first creation is just barely over a minute long. I hope that you enjoy it because it’s all you’re getting from me today.

And that, kids, is why you don’t do steroids.
If you have trouble with the embedded video player click here to view it at xtra normal.

Gearing Up

Starting in March I’ll be back on an official training plan and I’m actually excited about it. I don’t know what it is about printing out a training schedule that makes me go run but I just don’t do well without one. Maybe it’s the fact that there’s a race at the end of the training schedule, maybe there’s something about having an official training plan or maybe I’m just lazy during the off-season. I suspect it’s the latter.

On Monday I’ll start training for the Bolder Boulder 10K using the 12 week plan put together by FIRST. Right now the plan is sitting beside me on my desk, calling out to me, ready to kick my butt into gear and then just kick my butt. Right now the training plan (which was printed on our color printer at work. . . shhhh) is unblemished. There are no notations of runs shortened or intervals changed, there are no arrows indicating I moved workouts around to accommodate my occasional bouts of laziness or apathy, but there are also no checkmarks on the plan either. I hope to add a checkmark on Monday (or maybe Tuesday if Monday’s no good for me) but make no mistake, racing season is here again and my enthusiasm and hopefulness have yet to be squashed by an oppressive tempo run.

It may seem weird to some of you that a 10K is my most important race of the year but that’s OK because some of you seem weird to me, I mean, what’s with those shoes? The Bolder Boulder 10K was the first race I ever ran back in May 2005, and every year I use it as a gage to see how I have progressed as a runner over the past year. The least amount of time that I’ve shaved from one year to the next is 2 minutes 53 seconds. If I could shave that much off last year’s PR of 52:07 then I would finally be under 50 minutes. If that happens I’ll be ecstatic! A finishing time of 49:xx would be a bigger accomplishment than finishing my first marathon earlier this year, that’s how bad I want this.

Serious training is about to begin. As for the rest of this week? Meh, maybe I’ll try and squeeze in a few miles between watching TV and eating.

Getting Back on the Wagon

To say that I’ve fallen off the running wagon over the last couple of weeks would be an understatement. In true Half-Fast style, I dove headlong from the wagon with wild abandon and then shoved it over a ravine. I’m cringing at the thought of having to post my June running log because it will expose me as the slacker that I am. I suppose that I could point out how it might be beneficial to take a week or two away from running in order to recharge my legs but if this were an intentional break I would have been doing some sort of cross training to maintain my fitness.

The good news here is that I’m back to running again. I realize that I never really told you that I had stopped running, and in a way I didn’t. I just had other things get in the way like 10 year anniversary celebrations, and sleeping in. I never really “skipped” any runs I just postponed them, I still have 5 or 6 of them from the past two weeks that I’m planning on catching up on. Maybe I’ll do them all at once.

This week is going to be tough as I’m back at work after a week off and I have a lot of e-mails that I’m ignoring right now in order to write this post. I’ll also be traveling to Salt Lake City on business for a couple of days but I’m determined not to miss postpone any more runs so if any of you know any good places to run in SLC then be sure to let me know in the comments. Also, if anyone knows where I can get my hands on some coffee in SLC that would be helpful, because I couldn’t find a Starbucks to save my life last time I was there.

Good Friday

Today is Good Friday and if you’re unlucky enough to be stuck at work without the benefit of a TV to watch March Madness then you’re probably looking for something to pass the time during this lazy Friday. Perhaps that’s what brought you here to Half-Fast today. Unfortunately, it’s a lazy Friday for me too and I don’t feel like writing a big, long, entertaining post, but what I can offer you is this wonderful little game based on the movie Run Fatboy Run. In the game you are trying to burst all the blisters on Dennis’ feet. Once you get past the disgusting nature of what you are pretending to do in this game it is actually kind of fun. My high score thus far is 583 points. Telling you that is my way of slapping you in the face with a leather glove, throwing down the gauntlet, drawing a line in the sand and challenging you to a duel. That’s right, you heard me. IT’S ON!

UPDATE: UGH! I was originally attempting to place the widget in this post to allow you to play the game right here at Half-Fast but either the widget sucks or I’m an idiot. Most likely it’s the latter but for some reason when I embed the widget all the other images here at Half-Fast disappear. So if you want to play the game you’ll have to go visit the widget on Facebook, where they know how to properly install widgets. NERDS!!

A New Half-Fast Training Plan

I need to come up with a new training plan so that I can run the Denver Half Marathon in October. With the Bolder Boulder over and my calendar devoid of a training schedule I find myself wondering when to run, and for how long, and at what speed... you get the point.

Because my longest run to date prior to the Bolder Boulder was 10 miles and a half marathon is only 3 miles longer than that I find myself thinking that it shouldn't be too hard to add 3 more miles. How hard can it be? This is how great champions think. I don't ask why? I ask why not? I don't ask what my country can do for me I ask what I can do for my country. I follow the lead of great men of action who fought on even in the face of many doubters. Men like the great General Custer, men like Peter McNeeley, men like Kevin Federline.

The next step in my quest for 13.1 is to find a training plan. I've considered Hal Higdon's Plan and the FIRST plan as well as just using the Runner's World SmartCoach again, but I haven't settled on one yet. I like to think I'm taking my time to select the best plan for me, but there's a better than average chance that I'm just a procrastinator who doesn't feel much like running. If you've trained for a half marathon let me know what program you liked and if you're a running coach perhaps you'd like to create me a custom plan. I'm ideally looking for one that requires very little training and provides through the roof fitness improvements. Your suggestions in the comments.

Inspiration

I try to post here at least once a day during the week, but I'm sorry to tell you that I'm just going to phone it in today. Hey, what did you expect from a blog named half-fast. I'm feeling pretty half-fast about everything right now, so it's a good thing that today is scheduled as an off-day. Is there any better feeling than checking your training schedule on a dreary Friday and realizing you don't have to run that day? Nope, I’ve checked my ‘feelings chart’ and it says there isn’t. It's like getting a permission slip to be a lazy bum all day. My apologies if I’m bringing any of you down and you were planning to do some speedwork or a long run today. Don’t mind me, I’m just going to be reclining over here with my feet on the desk. "Hey, somebody pass me that bag of pork rinds!"

Just because I would hate to be the reason you didn’t run today here’s an inspirational quote to get you out the door:
"Somewhere in the world someone is training when you are not. When you race him, he will win." - Tom Fleming's Boston Marathon training sign on his wall.

Nothing else to see here. I'll post my weekly running log sometime over the weekend, whenever I feel like getting around to it. Thanks to Copacabana Runners which is where my lazy butt stole researched the quote.

New Training Technique: Wogging

I'll occasionally surf the web while I'm here at work to find interesting articles about running or new training techniques. (Right, kind of like how it occasionally rains in Seattle).
Anyway, today I found this article, which explains the benefits of wogging:

A wog, Glenn explains, is just like it sounds: a cross between a walk and a jog. Take a little of one, a pinch of the other, and you’ve got a wog... he’s already discovered that moving quickly can be bad for your health. “… running is out of the question, despite my devotion to weight training and carb-watching. I am too lazy, too old and too fat to run.”

He's right about one of those (hint: I bolded it). He goes on to talk about getting your exercise while you work by carrying things and even goes so far as to mention 3 x 5 note cards - those suckers can be heavy!

When I’m feeling especially Olympian, I try to carry everything at once, closing the electric garage door with my nose, the door to the house with my foot. Talk about gymnastics. I combine weight-training and aerobics in one fell swoop.

Yeah, you're a gymnast alright.

Please don't mistake this post as criticizing folks who have to start out jogging and walking, if that's what you need to do to get started then more power to you, but when we start talking about getting exercise by hauling those note cards around it speaks volumes about how languid our society has become.
Also, can I recommend a tougher, more macho sounding name than "wog". I hear the name wog and it just makes me want to go lie down on the couch with a bag of potato chips. Even if we called it a Jolk it would sound better.