Mmmmm Pancakes

As promised in my last post my training has started! Yes, I’ve been running a lot more lately but I’m not sure if I can actually count it as training because I haven’t been posting my runs on Facebook. Does it even count as running if you don’t tell Facebook about it? Right now I’m leaning towards the Heart Center of the Rockies Half Marathon in Loveland in early November. Pros: It’s only $50, cool heart shaped medal, free pancake breakfast, tech shirt included, it’s 11 weeks away, and FREE PANCAKE BREAKFAST! Nothing is more satisfying after a run than trying to consume all the calories that you just burned. Cons: apparently you have to run 13.1 miles or something.

Last night while I was out training for my pancake half marathon (my new preferred name for the event) a lot of geese were flying overhead. I couldn’t decide if I should look up at the geese so that when they pooped I’d see it coming and be able to dodge it, or if I should look down so as not to take a goose deuce to the face. I tried it both ways but none of them ever opened the bomb bay doors so maybe I’m over-thinking this. I’ll continue experimenting and keep you posted. I also had a close encounter with a coyote on my run but I was less concerned about that, especially when I saw the ACME brand rockets he was using. Meep, meep!

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!

Re-Naming The Half Marathon

I have long thought that calling a 13.1 mile race a ‘half’ was a great disservice to the distance. This is mostly because I enjoy running half marathons and intend to run many more of them. The same cannot be said for the full marathon. I did not enjoy it, and I do not intend to run many more of them... that’s what I meant when I said that the same cannot be said for the full marathon. Why are you making me explain this twice?

This naming problem has been brought up by countless other bloggers. Nitmos complained about it in this post back when he wasn’t lazy and used to post regularly (“Hello Kettle, you’re black!”), but as you would expect from Nitmos he didn’t really provide any workable solutions. Typical. Kristina touched on the issue yesterday in her Op-Ed Wed piece which I highly recommend as it is a great read almost every Wednesday (the one time when it was not a great read was when Kristina took apart Reebok* for their EasyTone ads because it made me feel ashamed that I had posted the ads even though I ranted against them lightly disapproved. - Not cool Kristina! Not cool.) Kristina also did not offer any naming solutions, although to be fair her beef was with some idiot whose resolution was to rename the half marathon the ‘13.1 Marathon.’ That simply won’t do. If you did this you’d have to start calling 26.2 miles the Double Marathon and an Ultra Marathon would become a Double Ultra Marathon (which would appropriately be abbreviated as DUM).

I think we can all agree that you can’t call 13.1 miles a marathon, but I don’t like calling it a half marathon either. With that in mind I’d like to offer the following suggestions for races so that the 13.1 mile distance can finally get some much needed respect.

• The 21k - This is my second favorite option.
• The Double 10k - Theory: We overcompensate for having to use the word ‘half’ by sticking the word ‘double’ into the name of the race. Problem: Not an accurate representation of the actual distance, which leads me to my favorite option...
• The Triple 7k - This is my favorite option, stop making me explain everything twice. There is some serious overcompensation going on here which is what I’m all about. (In fact, the reason that I drive a beat up, crappy vehicle is to overcompensate for my huge, enormous... you know... ego... in a manner of speaking.) Plus, everyone knows that triple 7s are lucky. You might run a bad ‘half marathon’ but you’d never have a bad day running a ‘Triple 7k.’
• The Thirteeny - Yeah, that ‘teeny’ on the end isn’t helping.
• The 69,168 footer
• The 6,864 Acre Race - This sounds much more massive than ‘half marathon’ doesn’t it? If my calculations are correct (and they’re probably not) you would encompass an area of 6,864.4 acres if you ran a 13.1 mile square (i.e. 3.275 miles on each side of the square). Awesome!

I really think that if we all adopt one of these names for the 13.1 mile distance that we can get some race director somewhere to adopt our nomenclature and then I can totally take credit for it. Come on race directors, if your race was called the ‘P.F. Chang’s Rock ‘N’ Roll Marathon and Triple 7k’ it would make it sound like you were hosting two completely different races, and hey, guess what? They ARE two completely different races. Sure, the Triple 7k may often be run on a portion of the marathon course but it’s a different strategy and requires different training than the marathon. I’m not going to get into that here though because Kristina does a great job breaking down all the reasons why it’s a different animal in her post and I wasn’t smart enough to understand all of them.

Let me hear your suggestions in the comments.

*Actually, the Reebok post was fantastic, but I still don’t think people should make me feel ashamed of my chauvinistic tendencies.

Pick-Up Friday

So it occurs to me that I haven’t said anything about the Denver Half Marathon which is Sunday morning before sun up, literally. Sunrise is at 7:15 am at which point we’ll have been running for 15 minutes, unless we’ve already stopped for a walk break, in which case we might have been running for 12 minutes and walking for 3. You might be noticing that I keep saying ‘we’ instead of ‘I’ and that’s because Candis and I are both running this race, it will be Candis’ first half marathon.

Several months ago when I talked Candis into signing up for the half marathon I promised to run with her and pace her for the entire race and apparently Candis is one of those women who is all into keeping the promises that you’ve made. What. A. Drag. Anyway, this is probably the reason that you haven’t heard me talk about this race these past couple of weeks. I won’t be attempting to PR at this race I will be attempting to push Candis as fast as possible so that she can feel as miserable as I felt when I ran my first half marathon. Our goal time is somewhere around 2 hours and 20 minutes.

Today we went to the expo and picked up our race packets, but that’s not all that we picked up. Oh, no. We also picked up the following:

• We picked up some new cow bells for the boys.
• We picked up our free shirts and goodie bags.
• We picked up every possible free energy drink sample.
• We picked up every possible free energy bar sample.
• We picked up our energy levels. Way up.
• We picked up some more free samples.
• We picked up some unwanted junk mail when we registered to win a new car!
• We picked up our pace when the guy at the Larabar booth yelled “Hey, didn’t you guys already take a handful of those?”
• And finally, we picked up that that was our cue to leave.

Can I just tell you all that it’s not a good idea to let your children try all those energy drink/energy bar samples and then give them cowbells. Let’s just say the buzz we all had going in the car on the way home could have powered it. I think I know how Flubber feels.

Finally, I have to share the conversation that we overheard while we were busy imbibing Clif Shot Bloks like water. A guy walks up to the Clif Pace Team girls and after some pleasant small talk says:
Guy: So... how long is a marathon?
Girls: [Giggling] 26.2
Guy: Miles?
Girls: Uh... yeah.
Guy: And you run it?
Girls: Are you sure you’re at the right conference center?
I LOL’d. It turns out the guy was just there to help set up one of the other booths. He was not a runner, but you had probably picked up on that.

History In The Making?

History is written by the winners. You don’t often hear about guys who issued a challenge and then failed to live up to it, but that just makes this post unique. What I’m trying to tell you here is that I’m not the winner. I’m the loser. While I did set a new PR this past weekend at the Georgetown to Idaho Springs Half Marathon, I failed to best Viper’s time of 1:54:49. It was the most disappointing PR I’ve ever set.

I needed to average an 8:46 pace to beat Viper’s PR and what’s really frustrating is that I was on pace to do it for a while. Here’s a fun little game that you can all play at home: I’ve listed my splits below, see if you can figure out when my quads decided to lock up tighter than Fort Knox.

Mile 1 - 8:52
Mile 2 - 8:43
Mile 3 - 8:31
Mile 4 - 8:22
Mile 5 - 8:45
Mile 6 - 8:23
Mile 7 - 8:33
Mile 8 - 8:54
Mile 9 - 8:53
Mile 10 - 8:50
Mile 11 - 9:34
Mile 12 - 9:33
Mile 13 - 9:30

If you said mile 11, you win! Give yourself a pat on the back. At the end of mile 10 I was starting to slow a little but was still averaging an 8:41 overall pace and feeling like I’d be able to push myself in the final miles. Shortly after the water stop at mile 10 my quads just ceased up. I tried pushing through it, I tried changing my stride, I even stopped and tried to stretch for a few seconds. Nothing worked. My pace dropped to 9:30 in the final 3 miles and I couldn’t find speed anywhere within myself. I crossed the finish line in 1:56:45 (8:55 pace), a PR by over 3 minutes. Not nearly enough of an improvement considering that it’s been almost a year since my last half marathon.

I offer no excuses for my suckitude, and I’ll gladly take my lumps in the comments. I opened the trash talking last week and came up short, I guess I know how the French 4x100m Freestyle Relay Team feels.

Congrats to Viper who smashed my 10K PR with a blistering 50:48. I’m actually glad that he beat me because if we’d have both failed it would have just been pathetic. Despite my vows in the final 3 miles to give up running forever, I find myself resolving to train faster and longer in the upcoming months in that never-ending quest for self improvement - it’s one of the reasons that I really hate running. Running, I wish I could quit you.

Plans for a PR

With my Georgetown to Idaho Springs Half Marathon coming up next Saturday, this is probably as good a time as any to set a goal. In the past when it came time to set race goals I’ve set blatantly unattainable ones to push myself, I’ve set easy ones so that I knew I wouldn’t fail, I’ve set round number goals because they sound nice, I’ve even attempted to retroactively change my race goals so it looked like I succeeded. As you can tell, I take this stuff pretty seriously. I calculate and recalculate to make sure I’ve thoroughly thought through my race goals. (Thoroughly thought through? There’s got to be a better way to say that.) However, in setting my goal for this upcoming half marathon I’ve done very little thinking or calculating and it’s not a round number. My goal time is 1:54:48.

If you’re wondering where I got that time from then wonder no more; it’s one second faster than Viper’s PR at the half marathon distance. Up until May of this year, Viper had faster PRs than I did in all of the 4 major race distances. (Note: I consider the 4 major race distances to be 5K, 10K, Half Marathon and Marathon, this is my opinion, it is not fact although scientists often consider the two to be one and the same.) However in May I posted a 10K time of 52:07 which is still faster than Viper’s current 10K PR and thus put me 1-up on Viper. And if you follow my logic on how I could be 1-up on someone who has 3 faster PRs than I do, then you’re well on your way to becoming one of my favorite readers. The goal for next Saturday then is to claim another PR from Viper and then to bloviate at length about being 2-up.

Unfortunately, it’s a little more complicated than it sounds. You see on the same Saturday that I’ll be decimating the 1:54:48 half marathon record, Viper is running a 10K in the hopes of breaking the 50 minute 10K. Truth be told, Viper was on pace to beat my 10K time earlier this month, but instead decided to teach the internets about the Puke Threshold. We are all the wiser for it.

So mark your calendars because next Saturday, August 9th is going to go down in history. Will we both make our stated goals or will one of us fail? *cough Viper cough* Perhaps we’ll both fail which would be really pathetic and anticlimactic, but totally within character, for me at least. Either way, I’m drawing a line in the sand, and then drawing a little winking smiley face so Viper knows that this is all in good fun, and also maybe a cartoon Pluto because I learned to draw him as a kid and can still draw him really well. Then maybe I’ll draw a beautiful beach scene in the sand because, wouldn’t it be ironic if people were gazing at my beach scene drawing and missing the beautiful beach scene that was all around them? Man, some people are idiots.

If you’re really that interested you can see a list of my PRs at the bottom of this page, and can find a list of Viper’s in the sidebar at Booze Hounds Inc.

Elevation Profiling

Before every race I run I always like to make sure that I’ve looked at the elevation profile. It allows me to be prepared for the uphill sections that will no doubt slow my pace and shows me the downhill sections where I can make it up. Recently though, it seems that less and less races are putting their elevation maps online. Presumably the reason for this is because they know that I want to see one and they hate me. Either that or there isn’t enough of a demand for this information for them to take the 10 minutes that it would require to make it available. Whatever the case, it means additional work for me and the only thing I hate more than additional work for me is... well... nothing I guess.

I recently made mention of the fact that both halves of the upcoming Georgetown to Idaho Springs Half Marathon are downhill. For those of you shackled with the deductive reasoning skills of a Brussels sprout this is accomplished by the fact that the race is a point-to-point course starting in Georgetown (elev. 8500 ft) and finishing in Idaho Springs (elev. 7500 ft). That makes this race pretty much downhill all the way. Pretty much. Below you’ll find the Georgetown to Idaho Springs Half Marathon elevation map, courtesy of my work ethic.

You’ll notice that the first 2 miles are relatively flat, which is just a brutal way to have to start a race. What kind of sadistic race director starts you out on a flat surface? From there things just go downhill, literally. The plan is to try and conserve some of my energy on the slopes of miles 3 through 5 so that I’ll have the strength to get up that heartbreak of a hill at the 6½ mile mark. If you look really closely at the elevation map you’ll see the hill I’m talking about. *shudder* Obviously I don’t have to tell you guys that this course is not tailor made for setting a PR, but that’s exactly what I’ll be shooting for because I don’t back down from a challenge. I take the challenge by the horns and make it call me Daddy.

Up Next

I was really hoping to be able to take a little break after the Bolder Boulder, not a break from being awesome, just a break from running. Unfortunately though, I don’t think that’s in the cards, so I’ll be shifting my attention to a couple of half marathons that I have coming up (the Georgetown to Idaho Springs Half Marathon and the Denver Half Marathon). I knew that the Georgetown race was on August 9th but it didn’t occur to me that August 9th is only 10 weeks away. The FIRST training plan for a Half Marathon is 18 weeks long, which means that I’m already 8 weeks behind. Sigh. I guess I’ll keep running.

Not only am I 8 weeks behind schedule (hey just like at work!) but I’ve also got a trip to Vegas coming up in June. Candis and I will be celebrating our 10 year anniversary because she just keeps sticking around. It’s one of life’s great mysteries; why don’t psychics ever win the lottery, why does the doctor leave while you undress, and why is my ever-supportive wife still here? The world may never know. Needless to say, we will be spending very little time running while we’re in the middle of the frickin’ desert in June, and plenty of time eating and drinking inappropriately. That will probably put a 2-3 minute dent in my Georgetown to Idaho Springs Half Marathon (GISHM) time but it will be worth it.

Some of you mentioned in the comments of a previous post that it was time for me to add some new races and change up the routine a little. First of all, bite me. Secondly, the GISHM will be a new race for me this year, so kindly refer back to my first-of-all. This race starts at a breathtaking 8500 feet and gradually makes its way to the finish line at 7500 feet. I like to think of it as the PR-maker. In addition to the two half marathons I’m preparing for (two halves make a whole, no?) I’ll also throw in some 5Ks here and there, just to keep my t-shirt rotation nice and fresh.

Slippery When Wet

Denver Half Marathon Race Report

Editors Note: This is going to be a long post, so grab a cup of coffee, sit back and relax with your feet up. Tell your secretary to hold all calls and ask your boss to come back at a better time.

I was the only runner not smart enough to wear long sleeves.

I stood with the huddled masses, shivering at the start as the rain drizzled down around us. It was 41 degrees and I was leaning close to the other runners, soaking up as much of their heat as I could. As we breathed into our hands and bounced to keep warm it struck me as ironic that only a week ago runners in Chicago were faced with overwhelming heat and not enough water. In Denver there was so much water it was falling from the sky.

I was stuck at the back of the pack on account of my bladder deciding that it was too full just minutes before we were called to the start. I can see the 9 minute pace corral way up ahead of me but I can’t get to it. It’s OK because my race strategy is to run at a slower pace for the first 4 miles and put myself 2 minutes behind the required pace for a sub 2 hour half marathon. After mile 4 I intended to pick up the pace and make up those 2 minutes over the next 9.1 miles.

The gun goes off and a minute later I’m shuffling towards the start I put my headphones in and select my Denver Half Marathon playlist. I eventually cross the start and immediately find myself leaping over discarded sweatshirts, pants, rain jackets, ponchos, trash bags with arm holes, and even a pair of underwear. I guess they were chafing someone. It only takes a mile for me to become completely soaked which is a relief. I enjoy running in the rain, it’s just the initial getting wet part that sucks. Now that I’ve got that out of the way I can focus on my race.

At 3 miles I check my watch and find that I’m already 2 minutes behind the pace for a sub 2 hour marathon so I begin to increase my tempo. At this point I’m quite happy about the slow start as I have NEVER been able to start a race slowly and then speed up, I’m apparently more of a start-quickly-and-fade guy.

Just past Mile 4 Cheer Team Vanilla is waving, yelling, taking pictures and ringing those annoying cowbells. Who got those things for them? Not only did they stand out in the rain and meet me at the finish they were also willing to carb load with me the night before. Way to take one for the team. Shortly after this point my bladder (which I’m thinking about having removed) decided that it needs to be emptied again, but it will have to wait.

Having already run through the first two water stops without taking any liquids I decide that I had better grab some at mile 5 despite my bladder’s continued pleas to be emptied. By mile 6 I’m running through city park, where I am no longer sheltered by the high rise buildings. The wind is biting through my wet clothes and I pretty sure that my nipples could cut glass at this point. I check my watch and I’m only 1 minute behind a sub 2 hour pace, which means that I’m making up time nicely. I reach out to take a Clif Shot and the girl hands me three. I glance at the flavor to see what I’ve been handed and it’s Vanilla. It may sound stupid, but cold and wet and 6 miles deep into a half marathon I felt like it was a sign. It was like the sun was bursting through the clouds and angels were singing “Hallelujah! Hallelujah!” Only there was no sun, only rain. I downed one of the shot gels, put one in my pocket for later and tossed the third one back towards the girl who’d handed it to me.

By mile 7 I wasn’t paying attention to my MP3 player, I wasn’t thinking about how cold or tired I was. I was simply weighing the pros and cons of peeing my pants. The fact that running can put you in a situation that allows you to even consider this as a viable option is probably grounds for quitting. My shoes were already soaked, and if my shorts would have been wet enough to hide it I would have probably just peed myself.

I reached mile 8 and had almost dropped back to 2 minutes off the pace again. I was extremely disheartened and began to doubt my ability to finish in under 2 hours. Mile 9 had a couple of tough uphill sections and I felt sure that my pace had fallen again. The rain and cold got to me and I decided to stop and pee in Cheesman Park. Hoping to take no more than 15 seconds I found a nice bushy tree, I ducked under the branches and... Holy Shrinkage Batman! 45 seconds later I was back on the course and feeling much better.

‘Come on Vanilla’ I told myself, and yes I actually said Vanilla instead of Ian, because I was trying to remind myself that I’d have to blog about how I failed. I don’t know if it was the fact that I was carrying 7 less pounds of urine or if the 45 second break recharged me, but I was running strong. There was a hill at mile 10 but I didn’t even feel it, I was passing people like they were volcanic lava. I passed mile 11 without looking at my watch, it didn’t matter, I was just running. I grabbed a Gatorade and splashed it up my nose and down my front, it didn’t matter. I was running, I was Forrest Gump.

At mile 12 I did look at my watch: 1:50:06. All I needed was a 9 minute pace. I felt like I was on the verge of achieving my goal. I was willing myself to the finish. With less than a half mile to go I was only conscious of my legs as those weights beneath my hips. I crossed the finish line and stopped my watch at 1:59:42. Initial feelings of disbelief turned momentarily to elation and pride before giving way to uncontrollable shivering and icy pain.

Tomorrow I’ll have some more pictures and more on the post race thaw. Update: Here

I'm Running 2,561 Wienermobiles

It's Wienerific!
A number of weeks ago Just Your Average Joggler had a post where he discussed the length of a marathon using some non-standard units of measure. Today I will be employing the use of my plagiary tag and re-writing his post in my own words. I feel really guilty about it because I'm quite sure that no blogger has ever taken another blogger's idea and posted it onto their own blog. Ever.

As you know I'll be running the Denver Half Marathon on October 14th and while most people think of a half marathon as 13.1 miles I think I might prefer to think of it as:

• 2,561 Wienermobiles.
• 702,748.29 Cockroaches laid end to end, but I feel sorry for the .29 of a cockroach that has to be brutally murdered and sawn in half to complete this analogy. (OK, no I don't.)
• 221,337.6 Flaccid penises laid end to end. No word on whose flaccid penis that is and I really do feel bad about the 0.6 in this analogy. Is there any way we can use John Wayne Bobbitt's since it may already be a 0.6? (Did you know that there are 2 C's in flaccid or that it can apply to something other than your wiener? It's not a word I like to use a lot so I had no idea.)
• 47.56 Empire State Buildings laid end to end.
• 3,547 Small Intestines.
• 9,764.89 Shaquille O'Neals laid end to end.
• 11,857.37 Giraffe's Necks.
• 16.47 Trips across the Golden Gate Bridge - That somehow makes it sound better.
• 1,419.69 of the World's Longest Snakes. I hate snakes.
• 0.262 Panama Canals. (Did you know that if you spell the phrase "a man, a plan, a canal, Panama" backwards it says the same thing. Also, did you know that's called a Palindrome?) You did not!
• 207,504 Human tongues, meaning that a human tongue is roughly a quarter inch longer than a flaccid penis and there is no way to prove this because a human tongue has never seed a flaccid penis.
• 230.56 Football Fields
• 0.00655 Oregon Trails.

Also of note, I weigh the same as:

• 11.48 Spider Monkeys.
• 2,592 Human Eyeballs.
• 0.146 Testicles of a Right Whale. Now I don't know what a Right Whale is pero él tiene huevos grandes.
• 3,227 Quarters.
• 36 Chickens.
• 1.47 Jennifer Anistons.
  
  
  

I weigh 1.47 of these. I hope she's not stretching cold muscles prior to going for a run. Only an idiot would do that, right?
If you'd like to know how tall you are in tongues or if you want to know how many breast implants it would take to equal your weight you can visit the weird converter and figure it out. Be sure to let us know if you find any that are interesting.

Pace Teams

I was recently on the Denver Marathon's website when I came across a reference to the CLIF BAR Pace Teams at last years inaugural running of the race. I was intrigued by this idea but could not find any information about whether or not there would be pace teams this year. It was at this point that I began the futile, life sapping process that is e-mailing the Denver Marathon. I wanted to know whether or not they were going to have pace teams again this year, because this webpage clearly references last year's race, and also if they would be available for people running the half marathon.

I filled out their 'contact us' form and sent them a message. Four days later I received a response that appeared to be automated which directed me to 'follow this link' to their website for more information. You'll never guess where that link took me? Yup. Right back to the page that caused me to have questions in the first place. I guess that this means that the information on that page applies to this year too, which is good news because they have a 4 hour marathon pace team which should translate into a 2:00 half marathon for me.

The more I think about following a pace team, the more it seems devious, or somehow unethical (those words are both too strong but they’ll have to do because my thesaurus is giving me stuff like 'Machiavellian' and 'depraved'). One of the toughest things about my training runs is being able to judge my pace, and knowing when I need to speed up or slow down. Running a race involves more than just physical strength, it requires some strategy too. Will you try to run even splits the whole way or will you go slower on the uphill sections and try to make it up on the downhill sections? Running with a pace team eliminates that entirely. You just latch on to a group and run. You don't have to think about it at all. While that sounds appealing on many levels something about it just doesn't feel right. It seems too easy.

Fortunately for me I'm too shallow to care about being labeled as Machiavellian or a cheater so I will run with the pace team if the opportunity presents itself. Your thoughts in the comments, is it wrong? Would you run with a pace team?

In the vein of keeping up Video Friday here's a video for all you swimmers out there courtesy of With Leather.

Weeeee! This is fun!
You know that once you get your spot in that wave pool you're not getting out. Not for anything. No, not even to pee. Hey, you were all thinking it, I just said it.

Words I Refuse To Use

There are certain words that you will not see on this blog. Ever. With the exception of this post, because how else would I tell you about them. Oh, and another exception would be the comments section because I know that some of my fine commenters use these words on occasion. No other exceptions… until further notice.

I hereby pronounce the following words banned at Half-Fast:

Half Mary: This is often used in running communities as an abbreviation of half marathon. A half marathon is 13.1 long miles. On October 14th this year the Denver Half Marathon will soundly kick my rump and I'd prefer not to have my rump kicker named after a girl thank you very much. I know that there are many runners who've run longer distances in shorter times, but this will be challenging for me and there will be no sissying it up by referring to it as a half mary. Not on this blog. It was bad enough that during my first attempt at skiing, I was humbled by a bunny slope named the Schoolmarm (more like the Widowmaker), I refuse to now also be humbled by something called the half mary. Perhaps I'll coin a new term; the Half Martin. I think that could catch on quite nicely, although I'm not entirely sure how much tougher Martin is than Mary, with apologies to any Martin's out there reading this... what are you going to do? Beat me up? I doubt it!

Fartlek: If there's anyone reading this who's not familiar with this term you can find an excellent definition of it here. I don't mind when other people use this word but to be blatantly honest with you I think I'm a little too immature to use it. I just don't trust myself to write it without resorting to childish, grade school jokes and none of us wants to see that here on Half-Fast. I'll stick to calling it speedwork or interval training and leave the fartleks to the more serious bloggers who can handle the responsibility of using the word appropriately.

Jog: This also includes any variation of the word, jogging, jogger etc. I'm a runner. I run. Even when I'm doing a recovery run I still consider it running. Everyone has their own opinion on this but that's mine. I know that I used the word in my running vs jogging debate, but there was really no way around it.

Onomatopoeia: Because why would I ever need to use this word on my blog?

That's it for now. Just those four words. I'm sure that I'll have more to add in the future.

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.

Setting a Goal: Part 2 - At World's End

In the past the Bolder Boulder has been the only race that I’ve participated in, it’s been kind of like my annual self-check of how well I’m running, and since it coincides with my car’s annual oil change it has also served as a good reminder that it’s once again time for my mechanic to scold me for waiting so long. However I find that I’m beginning to take this running thing more seriously, last year my longest training run prior to the 10K Bolder Boulder was 6.2 miles (exactly 10K). This year my longest training run was 10 miles and I even did some speedwork and tempo runs. All this tells me that I need a bigger challenge, which is why I’m going to sign up for the Denver Half Marathon. Apparently they don’t have a logo for the half marathon so I had to make my own, pretty stylish huh? I’ve got mad Photoshop MS Paint skillz!

The half marathon is a great race to run because when you tell someone that you ran it you can kind of cough through the “half” part or say it quietly enough that people will think that you’ve just run a marathon. Then when you tell them that you did it in 2 hours and 45 minutes it will be impressive instead of pitiable. (With apologies to anyone who just ran a half in 2:45:00, you’ve already done more than I have.)

You might be remembering that I made fun of the Denver Marathon in this entry, and their marketing strategy of targeting runners after the Bolder Boulder, or you might be wondering why anyone would actually continue to read this blog after having read one of the posts. Either way it turns out that their marketing strategy wasn’t so bad after all.