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. 

Goodbye 2010

You know what’s sad?  I spent a good twenty-five minutes sitting in front of a blank screen trying to come up with a really clever title for this year in review post and couldn’t come up with anything better than Goodbye 2010.  Lame. 

It seems like everyone does a year in review post and I hate being the same as everyone else but how can you pass up the old year in review post?  You can’t, as evidenced by the fact that I’ve done a year in review post every single year of this blog’s stinking existence.  Yes, some of those links are duplicitous because this blog has only existed for 3½ years but it seemed more emphatic to link every word.  And just because I disappeared for 6 months of the year is no reason to not review the year, believe it or not I was still running even though I was not here telling you about it.  On top of that the year in review post is an easy one to write.  You simply repost your goals from last year, giving excuses for the ones you missed and patting yourself on the back for the ones you accomplished.  The only thing you really have to work at is an introductory paragraph... well would you look at that... it practically wrote itself.  (If only the title would write itself too, lazy title!)

2010 Goals (as posted here)

Post more frequently this year - I swear I’m not making that one up.  That was the first goal I posted last year and I even talked about writing 200 posts this year.  Obviously 33 posts is not going to be enough to call this a success.  Not off to a good start.

Run a sub 50 minute 10k - Nope.  0 for 2.  I only ran one 10k and I ran it in 54:something.  I don’t even care enough to go look it up or link to the post where I discussed it.  Haven’t I already linked to enough posts?

Set a new Half Marathon PR - YES!  I am awesome!  1 for 3!  No linking to that post either since it is the previous post.

Set a new 5k PR - Nope.  Nuh-Uh.  Didn’t do it.  1 for 4.  This is getting depressing.  Why do people write these posts again?

Run some different races Yes!  2 for 5!  I ran the Crossroads Half-Marathon and a couple new 5ks that I hadn’t run before.

Wait?  That’s it?  Where are all the other goals?  I really only set 5 goals for last year?  What’s truly unbelievable is that in almost every year that I’ve set goals (except for 2010 I guess) I’ve included ‘win an age group award’ as one of the goals.  In 2010 I didn’t include it as a goal and it actually happened.  I took 1st place in my age group at the Hawk Hustle 5k.  Why wasn’t that a goal this year?  What was I thinking?  You know what, I’m going to go ahead and give myself an extra credit point for winning that age group award which puts me at 3 for 5.  And now that I think of it, PRing the half marathon was a HUGE deal to me and really deserves to be worth 2 points instead of 1 which brings me to 4 out of 5.  So there you have it.  I scored 80% on the year for my 2010 goals, that’s a solid B+ (I’m grading on a curve).  Wow!  What an awesome year 2010 was for me.  I really rocked it.  Here’s to 2011.  I’ll call it a success if it can be even half as successful as 2010 was.

Competitive Spirit

I recently discovered that one of my coworkers is a runner. He works in a different department which means that we don’t have the opportunity to interact all that often but he mentioned in passing that he couldn’t afford to miss another run, which is totally something I would do to let others know that I’m better than them a runner. We talked about running for a few minutes, what races we were doing and how much we hate all the wind we’ve been having lately. It felt a little like we were sizing each other up, two fighters standing eye to eye at the pre-fight weigh in. In the interest of congeniality neither one of us mentioned any PRs or goals for our upcoming races and neither one of us asked. It was as though there was some kind of unwritten don’t ask, don’t tell policy. I desperately wanted to know who was faster but I didn’t want to appear too competitive, although that may have gone out the window when I stood inches from his face and stared him down. I also didn’t want to ask him his 10K PR and have him say “36:22, what’s yours?” because that’s when the lying starts.

Enter Athlinks. If you’re not familiar with Athlinks it is a wonderful resource. As far as I can tell Athlinks goes about gathering up as many online results as they can find for races (running, biking, triathlon etc.) and then they put them all into a searchable database. If you’re a member you can even track your friends and rivals. So I went to Athlinks and searched for this guy’s race results. Turns out we’ve run two of the same races, last year’s Bolder Boulder and last year’s Georgetown Half Marathon. Can you guess who won both of those races? (Hint: Do you think I’d be posting about it if I lost?) I beat him by 6 minutes in Boulder and 7+ in Georgetown. POW! Take that, coworker I barely know! Next time I see him I’m going to ask him about his race results. Then when he tells me I’ll be all condescending and sympathetic, I’ll tilt my head and be like “Aww, that’s OK. That’s still a good accomplishment, you should still be proud of those times,” because that’s also something I would totally do to let others know that I’m better than them.

So next time you run into someone who tells you that a long time ago they once ran a marathon in under 3 hours go to Athlinks and find out if they are lying. I use it all the time now, so don’t even bother trying to tell me that you ran a 19 minute 5K when I can clearly see that it was 19:14 you lying sack of crap.

Incidentally Athlinks is not paying me to write this but they should be, that’s the 3rd time I’ve linked to them in this post. Plus, I’ve come up with some cool new slogans that they can use:

Athlinks, the great new lie detector.
Athlinks, helping you put coworkers in their place since 2005.

Whichever one they choose it will certainly be better than their current one which is Compete. Connect. Ha! More like Lame. Boring. Am I right? It doesn’t even start with the name Athlinks (4th time!), it’s like they know nothing about branding. It doesn’t even convey that you can catch people in their lies! Madness.

Daylight Savings Time

This is a public service announcement to remind you that you need to Spring your clocks forward this Sunday at 2am, or Saturday night if you don’t want to stay up until wee hours and do it the right way. This probably doesn’t apply to you if you live outside the US or in the crazy state of Arizona. My theory about Arizona is that there are a lot of retired folks there and they get confused trying to reset the clock on their DVD players so the Grand Canyon State just decided to save them the trouble by avoiding Daylight Savings Time altogether.

Your feelings about DST as a runner probably vary depending on whether you are a morning runner (masochist), an evening runner (too lazy to get up early and run) or a mid-day runner (unemployable). If you are a morning runner then it was just starting to get light towards the end of your runs and now all of a sudden you’re going to be running in the dark again. Additionally, it will probably be colder when you run since the sun is an hour further away from rising, sucks to be you. If you are an evening runner then you’ve just garnered an extra hour of daylight which means that you’re going to have to procrastinate for an hour longer before you can use the excuse that it’s too dark to run. (It’s never too dark to run if you have enough reflective gear, and in some areas of town enough pepper spray, but it does still make for a good excuse.) If you’re a mid day runner then you probably don’t care what time of day it is since you clearly don’t have anything better to do with your time than go run, just be sure you don’t miss your favorite day time television shows.

I mostly run in the evening which means that I’m happy about DST coming earlier in the year than it used to. Of course it means that I have to change the time on all of the electronic devices in my home and then watch them all re-adjust themselves again a few weeks later since no one told them that we switched DST to the 2nd Sunday in March. Or I could just let them display the wrong time for a few weeks... yeah... I think I’ll go with that option.

Have a good weekend everyone!

Running Again

I went running yesterday morning, because I couldn’t bear the thought of resting any longer. I have experienced very little pain in my knee since the end of the all the football games on Sunday evening, but I am certain that my FBNH injury recovery system is fully responsible for what appears to be a complete recovery... almost. I had intended to run a very cautious 3 miles at a relaxed pace, but after a painless couple of minutes I found myself running at a heightened velocity. The scenery in my peripheral vision blurred together and disappeared behind me, the crunching of gravel underfoot grew rhythmically faster, my legs danced like a flautist’s* fingers trying to keep up with The Flight of the Bumblebee, the wind rushed fiercely through my ears, in one and out the other, my stride returned to its glorious, pre-injury form, and with it all, my proclivity for longwinded, run on sentences was apparently restored.

You might have deduced that it was a good run from my magniloquent description of it above, but at the very end of my 3 miles I did start to notice a faint pain in the back of my right knee again. Fortunately, I was finishing up my run and was able to kill it with a fun-sized pack of Advil. I’m going to rest up over the next couple of days and then make a second attempt at the 17 mile long run that was cut down in the prime of its life last Saturday. If I am unable to finish what I’ve started this coming weekend then it will be a sure sign that my work life has started to slip into my personal life, and also I’m going to look into having my knee replaced so that I can be ready for the PF Chang’s R‘n’R Marathon in January.

Do you hear me, right knee? If you screw up again you’re getting replaced. I simply won’t tolerate certain body parts quitting on the rest of us.

*Or ‘flutist’ if you prefer to be a little less pretentious, which I don’t.

Running in Salt Lake City

If a post goes up at 4:00pm on a Friday will anyone read it before Monday? Let’s find out...

I liked Salt Lake City. There are a few things that I could do without, like the motion-detecting soap dispenser at the office with the itchy trigger finger. Three times now that thing has ejaculated all over my sleeve because I’m too dim to learn from my mistakes. I’m also not a big fan of the crosswalks chirping at you when it’s your turn to cross the street. Shut up already! The people here seem really nice though, everyone has been very accommodating and this guy even offered to run with me, which would have been cool if we could have worked it out because I’m always looking for someone to carry my water bottle, my phone, and my oversized ego.

I used Google Maps to look for a park close to my hotel and found Liberty Park roughly 2 miles away. I memorized the route (7 blocks south, 5 blocks east), said a fond farewell to the free wine in the lobby and started out. I had a 6oz water bottle in my pocket because no one offered to carry it for me... hmmm... so much for everyone being really nice here.

Liberty Park had some beautiful views, by which I mean that there were hot chicks in sports bras running, playing tennis, and rollerblading. Rollerblading? Holy crap! Have I been transported back in time to the year 1998? In addition to the talent, Liberty Park is quite scenic. There are tennis courts, a lake pond with ducks on it, and plenty of trees to shade your way. There’s even a 1.5 mile wood-chipped loop that’s built for running (pictured below). I ran on it for maybe a minute before going back to the concrete sidewalk with the Rollerbladers, it was too soft, almost like running on a bouncy castle. Thanks, but I’ll be over here tearing my knees up on the concrete.


As I left the park and headed back to the hotel I remembered seeing a plaza on the map and decided to take a short cut. The plaza consumed a couple of city blocks and would allow me to cut a corner, cutting corners is what I do best. I arrived to discover that this plaza was a raised plaza and I was faced with the unpleasant reality of having to climb 23 whole steps!

As I slowed to walk up them the Rocky theme came blaring through my MP3 player and I had visions of Rocky running up the steps. I bounded up the steps as fast as I could, and because it felt so good and stroked my ego, I ran back down them, took that picture and then ran back up them again. 69 steps! I told you I was dedicated.

I was rewarded at the top of the plaza by this:

I took out my ear buds and leaned my head under the cool water. It felt wonderful. Standing there with my head in the water I pronounced this the greatest fountain in the history of fountains, and I just got back from Vegas where we watched the Bellagio fountains. Unfortunately these Salt Lake City fountains will probably have to be taken down to make way for the gaudy monstrosity of a statue that will be erected in my honor. I think that everyone will probably agree that it’s totally worth it though.

Additional Bolder Boulder Thoughts

Congratulations to Ilsa Paulson (pictured right) who won the Bolder Boulder Women’s Citizen’s Race. Eat a sandwich! Something’s not right when you can dramatically shift your center of gravity by nodding your head.

I don’t have any race pictures yet, but I will post them as soon as I get them. I didn’t notice any photographers when I did the Slip ‘n’ Slide so I doubt that there will be any pictures of that forthcoming. Many of you have requested pictures of my pace team (A.K.A. the awesome pantless running chicks) and rest assured that I am using the wealth of my powers for evil and attempting to secure those pictures. I do it all for you guys.

As per usual there were numerous sightings of runners who should have been cited for RWAI, that’s Running While Ability Impaired or running in a ridiculous costume. I’m not talking about the pantless pace team (although they nearly caused me to be RWAI if you know what I mean. Wink, wink), I’m talking about people running dressed up as giant hot dogs or gorillas and such.

At the end of the race we were walking through the line to get our post-race snacks, beer and soda and I couldn’t help but notice that many of the runners had grabbed the first soda available (Pepsi) and then ended up trading them in further down the line once they saw that Diet Pepsi was available. What a pathetic bunch we are, I thought to myself as the girl ahead of me traded down from sugar to aspartame, even after a race we don’t want the empty calories, even now we’re watching what we eat/drink. I rolled my eyes and gave the universal crazy sign behind the girl’s back before asking politely if I too could switch out my soda for a diet. Hey, no one wants to be a Fatty McDimpledButt.

Miscellany

Just a couple of housekeeping items today. First, I don’t think Candis ever posted her goal time for the Bolder Boulder. What’s up with that? I put myself out there with a 50:00 minute goal and she just tries to slide by with a post about how much tapering sucks? I won’t stand for it. Allow me to tell you what her goal is for the Bolder Boulder 10K on Monday: 1:06:30 (10:40 pace). Of course, I don’t particularly feel like this will be much of a stretch for her. She ran her St. Paddy’s day 5K at a 10:15 pace and has since zipped through a significant amount of speedwork as part of the FIRST training program. Personally, I think that she can get a lot closer to 10 minute miles, a 1:02:00 race time and since that’s so close to the 1 hour mark I’m going to go ahead and announce that as her goal time. 1 hour.

Second, if anyone is going to be at the Bolder Boulder on race day, Candis and I will be running in the FC wave (as in Fail Completely) which means we should finish somewhere around 8:30am. We’re meeting up with some friends and anyone who wants to stop by the stadium afterwards in section 108. I’ll be wearing a white shirt and probably this sweaty Red Sox hat, Candis will also be wearing a Red Sox hat or visor along with her Kiss My Asthma shirt. If you can’t find us, then look for the two most beautiful people in the section, we’ll try to sit right behind them. Or just stand in the middle of section 108 and yell “Yo Vanilla!” at the top of your lungs. I’ll be the one laughing at you, but don’t let that deter you from stopping by to say hi.

Stadium Map (click to enlarge)
Enjoy your 3 day weekend everyone. I’ll have the Weekend Splits post tomorrow, and then a detailed list of excuses race report for you on Tuesday.

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 Review of the FIRST Half Marathon Training Plan

Before I review the FIRST plan let me briefly explain what it is. The focus of the FIRST plan is quality not quantity which loosely translates to more intense runs but less of them, this is also supposed to decrease your risk of injury. Under the FIRST plan you run only 3 times a week - when I heard this I was all over this plan like hair on soap. There are no easy runs, you run one speedwork session, one tempo run and one long run. Where are the easy runs? They’re relaxing on the beach somewhere with a Corona, changing their latitude.

The schedule calls for Tuesday and Wednesday to be your speedwork and tempo runs consecutively... on back-to-back days, and then your long run is either Sat or Sun. I should note that after being too physically exhausted to complete my tempo run the day after my speedwork, I amended my schedule to be Monday, Wednesday, Saturday, instead of Tuesday, Wednesday, Saturday. On the 4 other days of the week the plan calls for 2 to 3 cross training days to maintain fitness.

Results/Review: You've probably all read my Denver Half Marathon race report, so you already know that I achieved my goal using the FIRST plan. I am faster now than I was before I began training and I have run longer than ever before. I also did not get injured during this time, but who can say whether or not that is attributable to the FIRST plan or whether that was just dumb luck. Knowing me, the latter sounds more likely.

Given these results you would think that I would be willing to endorse the program and sing its praises, and you’d be correct. However, I will add that you'd better be mentally tough if you plan on doing the FIRST training. There is some real speed involved in the workouts and I consistently failed to complete all the miles in a workout at the required pace, often having to slow down towards the end. During a couple of the runs I even outright quit and walked home. Hey, I’m not proud of it, but it happened. This frequently created nagging feelings of failure and doubt which are even evident in my goal setting post when I predicted a time of 2:06 for myself.

Prior to running the Denver Half Marathon I was actually prepared to write a bad review of the FIRST plan due to the fact that I felt the runs were too demanding and too unrealistic. However having had some time to reflect on my half marathon and comparing my running in June with my running today, it is painfully obvious that I am faster now than I was then. I am a better runner today, and you simply can’t argue with a plan that helps you accomplish that.

For more, see the FIRST Half Marathon Training Plan at Runner’s World.

Oops!... I Did It Again

Remember when Britney Spears used to be normal? Me neither.
What did I do again? I got up this morning at the butt crack of dawn and went for a 10 mile run. In case you're wondering what time the "butt crack of dawn" is, it's much earlier than the crack of dawn. For me it was 4:30 am. No, that's not a typo, I got up at 4:30 this morning and went running. I'm going to make an appointment to have a CAT scan in the near future because I think that something must be wrong with me in the head.

I had to change my route a little because when I came to the trail that I like to run on I discovered that it is not very well lit. I could barely even see the path let alone all the murderers and weirdos that I knew to be hiding behind every single bush, and tree. So I ended up sticking to the sidewalks with streetlamps until the sun finally got its lazy ass up at 5:30. I'm not used to being up before the sun and I know it's not used to seeing me first thing in the morning. I think it was confused at the sight of me, as it spent the rest of the morning hiding behind clouds, occasionally peeking between them to see if it could figure out who that crazy runner was. No way it could be Vanilla? Yes way!

In conclusion I don't much like getting up that early and I don't like running in the dark by myself, perhaps I'll take my dog with me sometime, but he can't handle 6 miles, much less 10. I DO however like not having to spend an hour and a half running in the evenings when I get home from work so I've got that going for me.

And yes, I am embarrassed by that post title. But no, I'm not sorry if that miserable song is now stuck in your head.