Too Much To Do

Well, for better or worse, there is just way too much going on in life right now and for a change, I can't blame work. Things are going to be this way until we move or maybe even longer. I don't expect to be posting much of anything during this time. This is partially due to everything going on and partially due to the continual emotional roller coaster that I am on. As those are mostly personal thoughts and feelings, I don't feel comfortable posting them here. Even though that would give me plenty to write, I'm just not ready to do that at this point. So, until I get back into some type of running schedule (or some other normal schedule) I think posts are going to be few and far between. Not that it's much different from how it's been the past few months. But it will make me feel better knowing that I'm not expecting myself to post anything.

Happy or Sad?

What's up? How's it going? What's new?

Most people do not expect an honest answer to these questions. They ask the question without really expecting or wanting an answer. And people respond with "great", "fine" or "good". I know I do.

Up until tonight, I thought everything was progressing fine. I was making it though each day. I would answer all these questions with the expected answers. But tonight I put two and two together and realized, maybe everything isn't fine. I think I've been a bit depressed the past few days. I can't convince myself to go to bed at night which makes me tired. I always want to be doing whatever it is I'm not doing. I want to do things that I know I shouldn't be doing. I've got a ton of stuff to do and once I start them, I don't want to finish them and would rather do something else.

I guess realization is the first step. Progression, now that is another story.

Getting Back to Life

Over the past couple weeks, I've been getting back to my normal life again. I'm back to work again. I've started to run again. Although, this took some encouragement from friends to get me back out there. I just didn't have the desire any more. To be honest, I still don't even now. But I do have the urge not to feel fat and exercising is helping that.

At this point, I don't really have any immediate running goals or desires other than trying to get back in shape. I'm kicking around an idea I've thought about in the past. During a recent weekend long run, we saw someone running their age in miles on his birthday. I've considered it before and it hearing about it again got me thinking about it again. So that's one idea. I've also qualified for Boston again and have friends doing the 2009 race. Maybe I'll consider that again. Although, that one might be a bit tough to handle as I was going to have to miss it in 2009 because of Jordan.

I'm just not sure at this point. There are lots of distractions going on right now to include preparing to move into a new house, renting our existing house and everything involved with doing those things. I guess lots of distractions are a good thing. They keep my mind occupied.

Good-bye Jordan

We said good-bye to Jordan today. We put together a nice service today to say good-bye. The pastor led the service and added some great words and scriptures, we read some poems and played a couple songs. It was the perfect way to say good-bye.

I'd like to share the music and poetry that we added to our service so that you can share in how we said good-bye.

"Glory Baby" by Watermark

A Snowdrop

The world may never notice
If a snowdrop doesn’t bloom,
Or even pause to wonder
If the petals fall too soon,
But every life that ever forms
Or ever comes to be,
Touches the world in some small way
For all eternity.

The little one we longed for
Was here and swiftly gone,
But the love that was then planted
Is a light that still shines on,
And though our arms are empty
Our hearts know what to do,
With every beat within our hearts
We say that we love you.

- Author Unknown -

Precious Child

In my dreams, you are alive and well
Precious child, precious child
In my mind, I see you clear as a bell
Precious child, precious child

In my soul, there is a hole
That can never be filled
But in my heart, there is hope
'Cause you are with me still

In my heart, you live on
Always there never gone
Precious child, you left too soon
Tho' it may be true that we're apart
You will live forever... in my heart

In my plans, I was the first to leave
Precious child, precious child
But in this world, I was left here to grieve
Precious child, my precious child

In my soul, there is a hole
That can never be filled
But in my heart there is hope
And you are with me still

In my heart you live on
Always there, never gone
Precious child, you left too soon,
Tho' it may be true that we're apart
You will live forever... in my heart

God knows I want to hold you,
See you, touch you
And maybe there's a heaven
And someday I will again
Please know you are not forgotten until then

In my heart you live on
Always there never gone
Precious child, you left too soon
Tho' it may be true that we're apart
You will live forever... in my heart

- Karen Taylor-Good -

"With Hope" by Steven Curtis Chapman

Good-bye Jordan, our precious, perfect daughter. We will always love and miss you.

As We Prepare to Say Good-bye

We’ll never get to hold you,
Or look upon your face.
We’ll never get to show you,
Our love through our embrace.

We’ll never have the feeling,
Of you calling out to us.
We’ll never know the feeling,
Of you looking up to us.

Why you were taken away from us,
We’ll never really know.
We look around for a sign,
As to why you weren’t to grow.

There is nothing we can do right now
Our minds are an absolute mess.
There is confusion, sadness, sorry,
And anger I must confess.

Our tears can not bring you back,
Back into our world.
You are gone from us on this plain
We’ll meet again I know.

So until that time I'll say to you,
And you must listen to your mommy.
Watch out for us when we come one day,
Your mommy and your daddy.

Cameron Azrael & Krystal Sariel

Found at Angel Babies

A Running Hiatus

It's now been over 2 weeks since I've last run and I do not know when I will get out there again. I was at the end of my taper for the St. George marathon when tragedy struck. I was unable and had absolutely no desire to get out there and pound the pavement. I suspect I will get back out there again some time soon, but it will just be for exercise for now. My goal was to train very hard to PR St. George. It was to be my last marathon in a long time as I took a break to raise my daughter. Neither were allowed. Now I have no goals.

Sadness

I am just so sad. As some of you may know, my wife and I just lost our baby. She was stillborn at 24 weeks. How is this fair? How can some people abuse themselves, doing everything in their power to destroy the life that is growing inside of them and produce a perfectly healthy baby while others who take the best care of themselves, doing everything right, have to suffer the ultimate blow? I just cannot understand. Our future that we were planning and preparing for has suddenly been ripped apart and destroyed. I feel like I haven't smiled in forever and that I may never be happy again. How can this be?

As I continue to struggle with the loss of my daughter, I have found some poems out there that help to express the pain.

They Say There is a Reason

They say there is a reason,
They say that time will heal,
But neither time nor reason,
Will change the way I feel,
For no-one knows the heartache,
That lies behind our smiles,
No-one knows how many times,
We have broken down and cried,
We want to tell you something,
So there won't be any doubt,
You're so wonderful to think of,
But so hard to be without.

Author Unknown

An Angel Never Dies

Don’t let them say I wasn’t born,
That something stopped my heart
I felt each tender squeeze you gave,
I’ve loved you from the start.

Although my body you can’t hold
It doesn’t mean I’m gone
This world was worthy, not of me
God chose that I move on.

I know the pain that drowns your soul,
What you are forced to face
You have my word, I’ll fill your arms,
Someday we will embrace.

You’ll hear that it was meant to be,
God doesn’t make mistakes
But that wont soften your worst blow,
Or make your heart not ache.

I’m watching over all you do,
Another child you’ll bear
Believe me when I say to you,
That I am always there.

There will come a time, I promise you,
When you will hold my hand,
Stroke my face and kiss my lips
And then you’ll understand.

Although I’ve never breathed your air,
Or gazed into your eyes
That doesn’t mean I never was,
An Angel never dies.

Author Unknown

Oh Father, my father

Close your eyes and feel me near
keep me inside your heart
let me live in your soul
you see through tears
the things we will never do
running across the fields of my youth
games never played
but it is not gone
those dreams you hold so close
for I live on in every child you see
little ones standing alone…lost
or laughing in a playground
swinging so high
touching the tree tops
that is I
wanting just to love
feel my happiness in the song of a bird
see my sorrow in mother
hold her close forever
feeling your strength
for there will be one to come behind me
whether through God's grace or
from a different calling
a child chosen through His hand.
For in darkness, a light will appear
even if it is just the dawn
signaling a new beginning
and as you gather my mother to your heart
release your tears
let the healing begin
and discover that I am here
in your dreams
in your tomorrows.
Every rainbow is the path home
and if you should stumble
I am the wings that shall lift you

Love, Jordan

Author: Theresa Cochrane

I'm Still Alive

Sorry for the lack of content lately. As has been the case for some time, I'm full of excuses. Everything in life has still been busy, but up until late last week, there was at least a little breathing room. That was ruined by a bit of rash that I picked up. I guess it turned out to be eczema. I don't want to get into the details, but there was a lot and it was all VERY itchy. The medicine I'm taking for the itching has made me very sleepy. So even though I've managed to get a bit more sleep, I've been just as tired.

As we approach our deadline at work things are getting hectic. As of now, we are still on schedule. So the last 4 crazy, hectic months of my life are looking like they may finally be done with. There will be other things, but at least they will be fun things in my life rather than work being my life.

Here's a recap of the last 1 1/2 weeks of running.

Last Monday -
5x1k 3:31 (5:36 pace) today w/ 400 recoveries; recoveries were 200m walk and 200m jog;
1 - 0.62, 3:31 (5:40), 170 bpm
R - 0.25, 2:56 (11:34), 134 bpm
2 - 0.63, 3:27 (5:29), 172 bpm
R - 0.25, 3:01, (12:05), 137 bpm
3 - 0.63, 3:31, (5:38), 172 bpm
R - 0.25, 2:59, (11:55), 141 bpm
4 - 0.62, 3:32, (5:43), 172 bpm
R - 0.25, 3:16, (12:54), 139 bpm
5 - 0.63, 3:34, (5:42), 173 bpm
It was a hard workout today. I really had to push myself to approach the goal times.

Last Thursday
The schedule called for 2 mile warmup, 3 mile tempo at 6:26 and 1 mile cool down. I found ~1.5 mile loop at work that was a bit hilly and it was also quite warm out. Given everything it was very difficult to keep up the goal pace. The first mile was OK as I didn't hit the big hill, but other 2 were slower because of big uphill in the middle of each.
1 - 6:19.70, 176 bpm
2 - 6:45.06, 182 bpm
3 - 6:43.77, 182 bpm

Saturday was the last long run before the race. The schedule called for 8 - 10 miles at race pace. I started out with the group so the first mile was very slow. The 2nd one was faster as a few of us broke from the pack. Then the next 4 were consistent as it was just John and I. John had enough after 6 so I did the last 4 and picked it up a bit. This is pretty much the way I anticipate the race going on Saturday. So even though I was pushing it pretty hard for 1 week before the race, I felt like it was good physical and mental training.
1 - 8:21.57, 137 bpm
2 - 7:12.10, 153 bpm
3 - 6:57.88, 176 bpm (must have picked up someone else heart beat)
4 - 6:55.66, 162 bpm
5 - 6:56.43, 164 bpm
6 - 6:58.43, 163 bpm
7 - 6:32.76, 168 bpm
8 - 6:14.16, 174 bpm
9 - 6:11.78, 177 bpm
10 - 6:04.24, 179 bpm

Today - This is the last week of training before the race. Beings this is a bit more advanced training program, I'm still pushing myself this last week. Just not as often or as long. Of course, I didn't push myself as often the entire training session, but I've complained enough about that. The schedule called for 6x400 at 81 seconds (5:26) with 400 recoveries. I walked first 160m of recovery and jogged the last 240m. I felt better today.
1 - 80s (5:27), 170 bpm
R - .24, (11:03), 141 bpm
2 - 79s, (5:19), 169 bpm
R - .25, (11:16), 144 bpm
3 - 79s (5:14), 168 bpm
R - .25, (11:26), 143 bpm
4 - 77s (5:16), 170 bpm
R - .25, (10:59), 147 bpm
5 - 76s (5:15), 172 bpm
R - .25, (11:08), 149 bpm
6 - 79s (5:19), 172 bpm

I have one more short 3 mile speed session on Wednesday and then I'll be shutting it down for race day. I now have an unlimited data plan on my phone. I will try out sending pictures and info here from the race to post my results. It will be brief, but will try to get something out. I'll also try to put somethings on Facebook. See the homepage of this blog to find my account info.

Well, I guess I've procrastinated long enough. It's late and I have to work again tonight. Blech! I'm still planning on getting to the August summary info. Maybe I can do that instead of working. How's that for procrastination. Anywho, until next time. (I will be back sooner next time.)

A Big Sports Day!

Not very much to report as far as running went today. The running partners bailed for one reason or another. So I was on my own. The schedule called for 13 at 6:52. As I was running a hilly course, I wasn't expecting anywhere close. It was a somewhat hard effort, but I came in averaging 7:18 per mile. It was more effort than I was wanting, but as it was so hilly, I'm ok with the time and energy. The race is now officially less than 2 weeks away. Sub 3 here I come.

There were 2 huge sports accomplishments today. First, the Cubs clinched the National League Central. This the 2nd straight year they have done this. Any idea when they last did it? Oh, it was some odd year of 1907 and 1908. We all know what happened then. I think it is meant to be. Even though they are not playing their best ball right now, they are still winning more than losing. Go Cubs!

The second big item of the day was in the FCS football league. Number 5 JMU was taking on #1 Appalachian St. Between the 2 teams, we have won the last FCS championships with App State taking down the last 3. JMU started down 21-0 by half time, but by the time all was said and done, we took them down, 35-32. Woohoo! Go Dukes!!!

Time to Catch Up

I seem to be getting worse and worse at keeping with any kind of consistency to this thing. For many months now I have been commenting (maybe complaining) about how busy I have been at work. Our project is still going on, but the ridiculous hours and definitely been reduced. I'm now down to something much more manageable. The problem is that the rest of life is getting in the way. There seems to be a lot more going on in life right now. And as I'm typing this, I'm noticing that my tendencies are to stress about one thing or another. Now that I'm not stressing about work, I'm stressing about everything else going on in life right now. Here's a bit of what is helping the rest of my hair to turn gray. Let's see, closing escrow on a new house in a month, sell or rent the existing house (and everything related to this decision), moving into the new place, picking out new flooring and kitchen designs in the new place, money, weekly appointments that take time away from work, baby/pregnancy stuff, getting in at least the bare minimum of workouts to try to have some success at this race which is now barely 2 weeks away, potentially the best shape I will ever be in for a race and the possible disappointment that it won't be as good as I want it to be, figuring out the new budget estimates, packing, decorating/furnishing/unpacking new house, etc. There are plenty of other things going through my brain, mostly when I lay in bed trying to sleep every night, but these are some of the highlights. Crazy!

Anywho, no one cares about what's causing me stress. After the crazy day I had on Saturday, I still haven't recovered. I'm not sore or anything, but it was very physically demanding. I slept 9 hours the next night and was very tired the next day. Since then, I have averaged around 6 - 6 1/2 per night and this has kept me behind on sleep. So I've definitely been a bit tired. Take that combined with everything above and it gives me less time than I would like. So this is one thing that has been left out.

I played my last softball game of the year, potentially. I've already been invited to join another fall league, but with everything else going on, I think I might need to pass. I got tons of action in left field and left center which was fun, but the other team was just way better. They crushed us 15-1. We ended the season something like 2-9. Horrible.

Monday's interval workout called for 8x800s at 5:36 (2:48) pace. As it was warmer and I wasn't into it, I didn't expect much out of this workout. I was close on most of the numbers, except the last two. Given the temps and my energy level, the results weren't too disappointing.
1 - 2:47, 168 bpm
2 - 2:50, 169 bpm
3 - 2:52, 168 bpm
4 - 2:51, 171 bpm
5 - 2:49, 170 bpm
6 - 2:54, 173 bpm
7 - 3:01, 171 bpm
8 - 2:58, 174 bpm

Today's run called for a 5 mile tempo at 6:42 pace. This is 10 seconds under race pace. My last 2 Wednesday runs have been something like 10-20 seconds faster than goal time so I expected that today would be the same. I didn't set any time goal in my head other than to push it a bit. As I mentioned before, since my workouts have been limited, I decided that I would push a bit harder. My numbers for today were faster than I thought I was capable of running. I could have easily broken 40 minutes in a 10K. I wasn't sure I was capable of that. I think I would have easily broken 19 minutes for a 5K if I was racing today. I did 5 miles in 31 minutes. That's a 6:12 pace. It was way faster than the schedule called for and I felt like I could have gone faster and/or longer if either was required. Nice!
1 - 6:24, 151 bpm
2 - 6:14, 168 bpm
3 - 6:16, 170 bpm
4 - 6:11, 174 bpm
5 - 5:55, 178 bpm

As I mentioned above, we bought a new house and move in next week. There is lots to do and decided between now and then. Most of my spare time and energy go into thinking/stressing about all this stuff. I guess I need to learn how to relax and enjoy all this stuff.

We watched The Biggest Loser tonight. The new season started this week. I haven't mentioned it in awhile, but I love this show. It is so inspirational. It motivates me so much to see these people who have struggled their entire life, who always say I can't and always choose the easy path find so much joy stepping on that scale at the end of the week, especially week 1. Even though tons of the weight is only water weight, the look of complete shock/joy at the numbers they lose is very enjoyable. They worked so hard and put themselves probably through more than they've ever been through and they get to see immediate results. This has got to be one of the greatest shows ever. They teach these people so much. I think a lot of people get themselves into trouble with their weight because they do not know a basic truth. If you want to lose weight, you have to take in less calories than expend. That's it. Simple math. Most of these people are so sedintary that their basal metabolic rate is only like 1200-1600 calories. Ok, as big as they are, it's probably higher. But still when you sit down and eat 800-1000 calories in one meal, you ate 1/2 if not more than 1/2 of the total amount you should be eating all day, especially if you are not exercising. I don't think people realize this. Once they get the basic idea of this down, they need to learn things that affect their metabolism like it's horrible to skip breakfast and glycemic indexes of food.

Maybe I should take this blog in a new direction once I finish this race. Since I will have so much spare time on my hands, I might as well take on another hobby to go along with the too many I already have. I should start adding daily, weekly, whatever posts about weight loss and was to help other people. I am so inspired by people who are able to overcome their weight problems through education and hard work. The problem is that I'm more of a teacher by example. So I'm not sure how succesful I can be at this needing to use words to motivate. Hmm, this will require some thought. Can I come up with something that will people will use as a resource to help themselves become more active and lose weight. There's so many resources out there already on the internet that I'm not sure there is need. Maybe this could be a resource to consolidate what is out there into a central location. Need some more thought and ideas on this I guess. Nothing like brainstorming as I type.

Well, this ended up being ridiculously long as I rambled on about things as they entered by head. Sorry about that. It's all because of The Biggest Loser. That shows rocks and it inspires. If you have never seen it, I highly recommend it.

The Last Long Run

I woke up Saturday morning know it was going to be a very long day. The goal for the morning run was to head out for the last long run before race day (which is now only 3 weeks away). We were looking to do the Tour of San Diego which is a 22 mile loop around downtown San Diego. We started at 6 am. Just under 3 hours later, we were done. It was another bad run for me again. this means my last 2 longs runs before race day were crappy. That's not good for the mental training that I need. I was able to push myself for the last 3 miles when I was really struggling. When I get to that point in a marathon, I tend to crumble. Hopefully when this hits again, I'll be ready for it.

I was hoping for a speedy recovery so I jumped into an ice bath when I got home. It's amazing how much and how long that lowers your overall body temperature. I was cold for a long time, but hey, my legs weren't hurting anymore.

After that we had a bunch of running around and shopping to do. Nothing exciting, but just making things clear that I'm not resting yet. After that, I was able to rest for around 30-60 minutes.

After the rest period, it was time to start the 2nd major part of the day. My company had a softball tournament all day Saturday. There were 3 different levels. I was playing in the very competitive Open division. The talent is very high in this division. I have played with the the same the last 4 years. We won it a few years ago and had a very disappointing tournament last year. There has never been a team in the league that has a woman playing, except us. The same woman has played with us every year. I guess most teams figure it would be a waste of a spot to add a woman. Not us. She is one of our best players. Anyway, I digress. Long story short, we played at 6, 7, and 8 in a round robin fashion to set the seedings for the finals. We won the first 2, was a head in the third 8-6 until we we gave up 12 runs in one inning. In 3 games total we gave up 35 runs. It's pretty sad that 12 of those runs were in one inning. Three teams were 2-1 and one was 0-3. The tie breaker was runs given up. We ended up second seed by 2 runs. D'oh! We won the first game at 9 pm and we were in the finals schedule for 10 pm. We played the same team that scored 12 runs against us. It was back and forth until the 4 or 5th inning were down 7-8 and scored 11 on them to go up 18-8. That's ironic. We held on to win by 7 or 8 and took it down. Sweet! It's now 11:10ish by the time we were done with everything. I was home, showered, in bed and sleeping by pretty close to 11:35. Man was I wiped. What a long day!

The Last Longer Tempo Run

I did a 10 mile tempo run last Wednesday and the schedule called for 8 miles today at race pace. As the temp was down and the tempo runs have been a bit on the quicker side, I figured this run would be a bit faster. I met Mike S. right at the start and he rode the 8 miles with me. We spent the hour talking which made this work out much harder than last week's. Both the 10 and 8 mile tempo runs were supposed to be at 6:52 pace. But as I've been slacking on the quantity of my workouts lately, I feel it's that much more important to stress the quality of the workouts I do get in. I averaged 6:40s for the 10 miler and 6:30s today for the 8 miler. Like I said, the 10 seconds per mile definitely felt harder than it should have been that I was talking the whole time. The speed of this work out wasn't one of those that fit into the saying that if you can't carry on a conversation while running, you're going to fast.

I did 8 miles in 52:03 with an average heart rate of 172. That approximately 90% for me. That's definitely a bit high, but as I've been too busy to work out too frequently, there should be plenty of recovery time built into my schedule.
1-6:26, 152
2-6:25, 168
3-6:31, 173
4-6:36, 173
5-6:40, 173
6-6:25, 177
7-6:27, 180
8-6:17, 181

I also heard from John A. today. He ran a 10 mile tempo today at 7:14 pace. He is shooting for a race time of 3:10. That's puts him right on track. Given that the race is easier than the course he ran today, he will go just fine.

Boston qualifiers, here we come.

Quality Training Sessions

As my work and life schedules continue to only allow me quality running of quantity, I'm taking whatever I can get.

My schedule called for my Saturday run to be 15 miles at marathon pace + 10 seconds. That equates to a 7:02. As the route was tougher and hillier, I had no intention of running that fast. I was just looking for a good running session unlike my prior workouts. Ended up doing a touch over 16 miles at 7:19 pace with about 750 feet of ascending/descending. I definitely pushed it, but I felt good. I finished by doing the last two at 6:43 average. Not bad.

I was able to hit the gym on Sunday and got in about 1 hour of lifting and core exercises. Wow! I am getting so incredibly weak. I guess all this running (even though it's not nearly as much as I wanted) and stress are causing me to lose weight. That and the lack of working out has made me very weak. I better hit the gym before my daughter is born else I might not be able to carry her. :)

Today the schedule called for 10x400 at 5:26 pace (approx 81 seconds) with 400 recoveries. For each recovery, I decided to walk the first 200 fast and jo the next 200. I averaged 11:30 for each 400 recovery. I had enough in the tank today to jog the recoveries, but I felt like pushing harder during each interval. It went really well today and I was able to be fairly consistent the first half. I decided to pick it up a bit for the 2nd half and put in some very good times.
1 - 84s, (5:39), 169
2 - 81s, (5:27), 169
3 - 81s, (5:25), 166
4 - 78s, (5:13), 167
5 - 80s, (5:10), 171
6 - 77s, (5:12), 171
7 - 77s, (5:10), 171
8 - 77s, (5:11), 174
9 - 74s, (5:05), 175
10- 72s, (4:50), 177

Well, I'm back to night time working. So no more procrastinating.

Can't Sleep

My busy schedule continues. I only managed to get in 3 workouts this week, two speed session on Monday and Wednesday and my long run tomorrow morning. This is no way to prepare for a race. The race is only 4 weeks away from tomorrow. I guess I'm in the middle of a super extended taper. The continued stress and pressure caused me to miss workouts and now it's preventing me from sleeping. The only thing that trying to sleep has gotten me this week is a lot of extra time to let me mind think about everything going on. So, here I'm am, writing about nothing. Maybe this will help. If not, running 15 miles in little sleep may help me crash during the day tomorrow. The goal pace is 10 seconds over marathon pace, but as the run tomorrow will be hillier than the race course, it may be more like 20-30 seconds over race pace. Anyway, I'm too tired to write anything productive like my August summary blog. I will work on that over the weekend and see how bad the month really was. Enough babbling, off to other things that do not include me sleeping.

A Race-Pace Tempo Run

The schedule called for a 10 mile tempo run at race pace which for me is 6:52 per mile. This is my goal marathon pace. The race is less than 5 weeks away and my confidence is not all that high as I've only been getting in about 3 runs per week for the past 4-6 weeks. They have been key workouts, but that's about I'll I've been able to fit into my schedule. So I didn't expect much today. It was also over 80 at the start too which is not ideal.

I was thinking I would try to start out around 6:52 for the first 5 miles and then pick it up a bit the last 5 miles. I started out a bit faster right out of the gate and kept trying to slow myself down. It didn't really work as my average pace continued to be under the goal pace of 6:52 for every mile. The watch finished the 10 miles in 1:06:49, but I think it was 33 seconds faster as I stopped for a few seconds around the start of mile 9 having seen someone I knew. I hit the lap button on my watch instead of the stop button. After analyzing the data, it looked to be about 33 seconds. So i think that lap ended up being closer to 6:05. All of this averages to a 6:40 per mile pace (6:37 with taking off the 33 seconds).

Here are the lap totals.
1 - 6:43, 151 bpm
2 - 6:37, 163 bpm
3 - 6:41, 165 bpm
4 - 6:38, 169 bpm
5 - 6:50, 170 bpm
6 - 6:35, 173 bpm
7 - 6:39, 175 bpm
8 - 6:42, 174 bpm
9 - 6:38, 177 bpm
10- 6:39, 179 bpm

I felt like I could have gone more miles and/or faster pace. This was a very needed confidence booster that I have needed lately. I feel that I could have easily tacked on another 5K to the workout to total a 1/2 marathon distance. At the pace I was running, I could have easily finished with a 1:27 1/2 marathon time and that's not going all out. I think this is why I was a bit disappointed with my results at the AFC Half Marathon because I knew I was capable of this. Even though the race was warm, it was cooler than it was during today's run. Of course, the run today was quite flat (only 210 feet of elevation gain/lost) compared to the race. I guess that made the difference.

As the St. George race profile is a downhill course, I would expect a slightly slower pace than I average today spread out over 26.2 is still still in the realms of the possible. I need to average 6:52 per mile during the race to finish under 3 hours. My confidence is climbing, a bit.

Any of you other there looking for a good training plan and like what you read here, I may have a recommendation for you. You've read how much I've been slacking and I still feel that I'm arguably faster than I've ever been.

A Quick Post

Did a speed session on Monday. The goal was 3x1600m at 5:51 pace with 400m recoveries. As running and working continues to be more and more limited, I didn't expect much. The results weren't horrible, but also weren't great.
1 - 6:08.54, 169
R - 3:32.16, 122
2 - 5:55.62, 173
R - 3:29.19, 131
3 - 5:52.09, 176

As we are now out of the casual softball league, I'm now in one league. Our team is bad. We got our first win last week. We were ahead by 1 in the game tonight going into the top of the last inning. Our pitcher walked the first 2 batters who eventually both came around to score. We lost by one. Bummer! I got more action tonight in left field than I have in all the other games combined. It was nice to get the chance to make some plays. I ended up making 3 really good, tough plays amongst all the others. My hitting was much better tonight as well as they batted me lead off.

Tomorrow speed session will be 10 miler at 6:52 pace. I suspect this should be doable without too much work, as long as it's not really hot.

My eating still has not improved that much, but I have become more conscious of it and have been making some better decisions. Unfortunately, I've been and will likely be over the next couple days way to busy to keep track of everything in this journal. Writing it on a piece of paper will not have the same affect as putting it up here when I know others see it (even though they could care less).

Anyway, lots of other things to prepare for as other things are going on in life. I will post some of it in the coming days once things solidify a bit.

A Bad Week for Exercise

Monday - After taking a week off from speed work because 1 I was too busy and 2 I was recovering from AFC, I got back to speed work this week. The schedule for today called for 1k, 2k, 1k, 1k aiming for 3:31 /K (5:39 /mile) for 1Ks and 7:25 /K (5:56 /mile) for 2Ks with 400m recoveries. Definitely felt a bit rusty as I came close to hitting my goal times.
.62, 3:39 (5:56), 168 bpm
.25, 3:10 (12:36), 129 bpm
1.24, 7:24 (6:00), 170 bpm
.25, 2:58, (11:55), 141 bpm
.63, 3:30, (5:34), 175 bpm
.25 2:59, (11:44), 144 bpm
.63, 3:39, (5:50), 177 bpm

Tuesday - We played our last softball game of the season in the casual league. We were playing awesome, up 8-1 after 6 innings. We made a few errors and gave up 8 runs in the 7th, fell behind for first time and never caught back up. I was fine in the field, but my hitting was horrendous. I was something like 0-3 with a sac fly and an RBI. Everything I hit was a weak popup. I didn't drive anything and definitely cost our team some runs where I can usually be counted on. What a crappy way to be knocked out of the play offs.

Wednesday - Goal was 1 mile warm up and then 5 miles at 6:41 pace. Hit goal pace, but it felt harder than I thought it would.
1 - 6:37, 164 bpm
2 - 6:34, 168 bpm
3 - 6:31, 170 bpm
4 - 6:38, 174 bpm
5 - 6:26, 178 bpm
averages 6:33.2, 170.8

Thursday - I was too busy to get in any type of workout before, during or after work.

Friday - I was too busy to get in any type of workout before, during or after work.

Saturday - The goal for today as to run 20. I have not done a 20 miler in quite some time. I had a pretty terrible week of eating and I wasn't able to workout nearly as much as I would have hoped to. The plan was to run out to Iron Mountain and back (but not up it). This gets us around 17 and then we would tack on another few here and there to hit 20. This is not an easy course by any stretch of the imagination, but it would be easier than the last time as 1,000 ft of elevation ascent and descent. Long story short, it was a crappy, crappy workout today. I ended up having stomach cramps for about 1/2 of the run and walking part of it. I hit 19.26 miles and called it quits. I'm usually pretty anal when it comes to hitting my goal distance, but I figured it was pretty much going to be useless miles and I had no desire to go any more than I had to. It was brutal. It's amazing how I could run 18 last weekend and then immediately do 30+ on my bike, but today, I run 19 and had nothing left in the tank at the end. I was pretty useless afterwards too. Very frustrating!


This seemed like a pretty bad week of training as I missed 3 days of workouts because I simply did no have enough time to get them in and I ended the week with one of my worst long runs in a long time. I have found that I have been getting a bit more sleep these days, but my eating has gotten to be very bad. I haven't cut that much caffeine out of my diet yet either. As the race is now only 5 weeks away, I really need to get things under control. I think I may need to reenact the food journal for a week or two as it forces me to eat better as I have to report everything I take in. I don't feel like I've been taking in enough water either lately. I think doing this will help all of these "problems" I feel I have right now before the race.

Ultrasound Results and It's a ...

---girl! We're so excited to find out we are having a baby girl. We got to see what she looks like today. She is 10 ounces and very active. She was dancing a little jig on Wendy's bladder. Looks like she may be a bit hyperactive, just like her father. :)

Endurance Session

Today ended up being quite the marathon session. By the time noon rolled around and all was said and done, I ended up running 18 miles and cycling 34 miles. I have not been on my bike in about 1 1/2 years, but I ended up doing relatively well, especially considering the run of 18 miles prior.

I started off by running 17.66 miles at an average of 8:07 per mile in 2:23:22. This included quite a bit of rolling hills along with some trail running. It ended up being 1164 feet of elevation gain during the run. My HR averaged 152 bpm and maxed out at 179.

I then road home and got on my bike and rode 34.45 miles in 2:11:02. This included all the stops at a bazillian stop lights and stop signs. My legs were definitely feeling it, especially withing the first few minutes that started off up hill. It was an up and down ride as my energy levels were up and down. Every time I through down goo, my energy level spiked and I would do good for about 4 miles or so. The HR effort averaged 144 and maxed out at 170 during the 1044 feet of elevation gain.

I knew that hydration and food were going to be very important during these workouts so I made sure I took in enough. Let's see if I can recall everything before and during both.

Slim Fast like diet drink 250 calories (8 oz of fluid)
During and after run, 57 ounces of water
150 calorie eGel goo
250 calorie Power Bar after the run
Approximately 12 oz of Gatorade
During the ride, 40 ounces of water containing 2 Nuun tablets
3 goos at 100 calories each

Took in a lot of calories, elecroltyes and fluids. I think I could have done a couple more calories and a little more fluids, but all in all, it ended up helping considerably.

2008 AFC Half Marathon Race Report

I've had high expectations for this race ever since the 5 mile race I did on the 4th of July. I had a lot of high quality speed sessions as well as high quality long runs leading up to the race. As has been reported here, the 2 to 3 weeks before the race were definitely not ideal. My eating habits were taking a turn for the worse and my already poor sleeping pattern as getting worse.

The night before the race, I managed to eat a healthy grilled BBQ chicken breast, potatoes and green beans meal. Already being tired, I only managed to get 4 hours of sleep the night before the race. I woke up at 4:10 AM completely exhausted. The say the night before the race isn't all that key when it comes to getting rest before a race and it's more the days leading up to the race. Even though I was getting more than 4 hours of sleep on average, it probably wasn't much more than 5. Oops.

For breakfast, I had my normal 1/2 serving of N-Large weight gainer shake mixed with 8 ounces of skim milk. This usually works pretty well for me. It's around 400 calories with carbs, fat and protein. In comes in around 40 grams of protein and has a lot of milk. Both of these are not recommended pre-race by a lot of people, as they have digestions problems from it. However, I have found it to work pretty well for me. I also made some black tea in hopes that the caffeine would help me wake up some. Of course, there are also studies out there about the benefits of caffeine on endurance events. I was looking more for the energy boost to wake up though.

I got to the parking lot around 5:15 near the zoo. I tried to meet Andy and Nicole to take the buses over to Cabrillo National Monument with them, but we were unable to find each other. Due to us missing each other and a mixed post race schedule, we were unable to meet up during the morning.

As I was on the bus ride heading to the start line, there was a thermometer on the bus going back and forth between 70 and 72 degrees. It was still dark outside and that warm already. Not a good sign. The skies were clear. Also not a good sign.

Nothing too exciting the 45 minutes leading up to the race start. I waited in the ridiculously long lines for the bathroom, looked for Andy and Nicole for a bit and then headed to the start line. I got in pretty good position and waited for the gun.

As we waited, there was a lot of chatter about the sun being out and the skies being clear. It was definitely going to be a cooler race than it was last year, but far from ideal. I was keeping a positive attitude and not letting the temps bother me as most of my speed sessions had come at very warm parts of the day. My goal was to push as hard as possible with the ultimate goal of breaking 1:30. If all the stars aligned and everything worked out, I was hoping to approach the 1:27 finishing time. As it was warm out and the sun was shining at 7 am, conditions were already not ideal. So I expected 1:27 to be unreachable, but I really wasn't sure what I'd be capable of.

Sadly enough, that's the majority of the race report. There really was not much to report during the race. The gun went off and 2 guys behind me were talking about Usain Bolt from Jamaica and his ridiculous 100m world record race the night before. After I pulled away from these guys, the first couple miles were very quite. There was no crowd cheering and none of the runners were talking. All you could hear were the pounding of shoes on the pavement.

My splits for the first fourmiles were a bit sporadic as the terrain was rolling and then a big downhill. Once I got done with the downhill, I tried to find a pace where I felt like I was pushing it a bit, but not so much that I would be compeltely dead by the time I hit the hills at the end. I found the pace to be around 6:45-6:50. I was hoping it would be more like 6:30-6:40. I just couldn't hit that pace today.

I spent a lot of the race running by myself or around very limited amounts of people. I guess part of that is the speed I was running, but there were other groups out there. It makes for a bit of a boring run, but the good thing about it is that you get a lot more pictures taken at the photo spots. There were 2-3 photographers at most spots. When I would approach, they'd all take a couple pictures. This made for lots of pics of me.

http://www.marathonfoto.com/index.cfm?RaceOID=27252008M1&LastName=SMIDT&BibNumber=7510&Mailing=16315

As I approached the last 5K of the race, the uphills began. I definitely increase my effort while my pace decreased. I was thinking at this point that I would be righ around 1:29 and likely be a few seconds over.

I usually pick a starting goal time and then keep track of the number of seconds under that pace that I run every mile. For this race, I picked 7:00 miles. This would give a 1:31:43 finishing time. By the time I hit the last 5K, I had something like 150 seconds in the tank. Take that off the finishing time and I get 1:29:13. Ok, well, that must not have been the number, but you get the idea.

I hit the hills and pushed hard to try keep my pace reasonable. The sun was really bearing down by this point and it was definitely getting warmer. I had been dumping water over my head as much as possible and drinking water at every water stop. I took two e-Gels from Cranksports during the race to give me 300 calories of energy during the run. I definitely wasn' hungry, but the energy definitely helped.

I approached the top of the last hill feeling tired, but not nearly as wasted as the past 2 times. I took the right hand turn to head over the bridge and into Balboa Park. I was right behind 3 other guys. The last 2 times I did this race, I tried picking the pace here and felt like I was going to puke. Having the motivation of catching and passing the guys in front of me, I picked up the pace. One got decided to hang with me and we quickly dropped the other two. I was getting pretty tired by now, but had less than 1 mile to go. I wasn't getting sick this time either. I felt like the guy next to me was more tired than me so I dropped the pace down a bit more. He couldn't hand and fell back. Again I was by myself. I made the last right hand turn headed towards the finish line. The crowds were roaring by the time. I spotted Dano and Melissa cheering and pushing me to run faster. I rounded the last curve and saw someone in front me. I dropped the down again and easily past him. Right before the line, I saw the race clock hit 1:29 and I did a dead sprint. I crossed somewhere around 1:29:03 or 04. I knew I was a few seconds back at the race start. So, I knew it would be close to 1:29.

Officially, I finished in 1:28:59. That was good for 94th out of 6,482 finishers and 10th in my age group. My average pace was 6:48 per mile. It was a PR by 56 seconds. So I was happy with my results, but still wish I had done better. I felt like I couldn't have run this race on this day much faster. I was just hoping the finishing time would have been a bit quicker.

Below you will find my race splits and the race profile with some of my info.

1 - 6:50.17, 164
2 - 6:59.32, 170
3 - 6:33.68, 170
4 - 6:05.62, 169
5 - 6:44.15, 175
6 - 6:56.43, 174
7 - 6:55.87, 174
8 - 6:46.81, 175
9 - 6:45.37, 177
10 - 6:48.11, 178
11 - 6:47.57, 180
12 - 7:26.12, 183
13.1 - 7:22.18, 186

No News Today

I am dragging this week. From the intense effort at this past weekend's race, a continued lack of sleep and some added stress at work again this week, I am struggling for energy. My eating has been poor and I missed both speed sessions this week. I did do 2 5ish mile runs that felt pretty easy at a 7:30 pace, so I guess that's worth something. I'm not going to beat myself up too much about it. It's probably better this way. It keeps me from pushing too hard immediately after the race and increasing my chances of over training, which I do have a tendency to do. Anywho, I'm tired and will be hitting the sack early tonight. Maybe one good night will help bet me back on the path to recovery.

Softball and More Softball

My AFC race report should be coming tomorrow. Unfortunately, I have not had much time to do it yet. For example, I was pretty much gone from the house today from morning until now. I had a full day's work, which included me getting out for my first post race run, played softball, and then played softball again.

The first game today was the beer league. We are now in the loser's bracket having been crushed the week before. Tonight we played the team that we beat the first time 39-15. We should have scored more that game and they should have scored less. It was a very much different team tonight. I think they improved a bit and also picked up some talent. It was a very close game the entire way. We pulled ahead a bit at the end and hung on for a 14-10 win. At this point, we play until we lose or win it all. I did ok tonight, I was 3-5 with 1 run scored, 1 double and 1 sac fly. I reached on error once and the sac fly and other out were both hard hit line drives to the left fielder. Not great, but definitely an improvement from the last couple weeks. My fielding was solid. I made every play hit to me at short stop including 2 over the shoulder catches heading out to center and 1 more that had me completely laying out for a ball hit over the 2nd base to make the out. Sweet! The team played great. We only had 9 players, but fielded a very solid team. Very encouraging.

I then rushed home, got a quick snack and headed out for my other game in the competitive league. We are winless playing against the other winless team in the league. The other team has outscored us by 50%. We hit like mad men out there tonight and pulled out a 22-10 win. I was something like 4 for 5 in that game with a double, an rbi or 2 and a few runs scored. The only bad thing is that when I slid into 2nd for my double, I tore up my legs. I skinnned my ankle and knee pretty good. The very next play, I slid head first into third and scraped the heck out my hand, finger, hip and took a huge chunk. Out of my right arm near my elbow. It was full of dirt and bleading like crazy. When I got home, I cleaned it out with water only and put some neosporin on it. I hope that works. It is the deepest gash I've ever had taken out of me. Hopefully neosporin is enough. Given my lack on medical knowledge, not sure what else to do. That is more than I usually do for my scrapes and cuts. In fact, I did nothing for the test of them. Oh well, I guess if something happens to me then we'll know what it was.

Anyway, gotta run as it's late and I've got more stuff to do before bed.

My Normal Pre-Race Meal

It's funny. I see a few people have made it to this site by way of my post titled The Best Pre-Run Meal". While I was completely honest about it and have done it again since then, I don't know that it's the best advice to be giving people. I've brought the idea up with friends and have had some others agree with me. I don't think you will read any advice any where that suggests it's a good idea, even beneficial, to eat 1/2 of a large pepperoni pizza before a long run. I have had good results with it, but I've got to believe that I'm in the minority with that view. With what I'll be writing below, you'll see that I don't believe it to be the best, because I never eat anything like that before a race. When it comes to preparing for race day, I usually follow along the lines of what most others think.

Most people suggest a pasta dinner the night before a race. I've found that I have the best results when I do pasta 2 nights before a race. The night before a race, I like to do a simple, small to average sized portions of plain chicken breast, brown rice and a vegetable. That's almost 180 degrees different than my pizza meal suggested earlier. Maybe one of these races I don't plan on taking too seriously I'll do the pizza meal before a marathon. It would be interesting to see if I'm able to push the wall out a couple miles.

For me, this advice is definitely for those longer workout/races. When it comes to half marathons as I have coming up on Sunday, pretty much anything goes. As I plan on taking this race seriously and going for a PR, I will be eating a light meal with protein and carbs.

So for those of you that come here looking for food advice, you may want to lean towards this post rather than my earlier post.

Week's Summary

It turned out to be a busier week than expected. Even though I didn't have to put in quite as many extra hours this week, I still worked extra, including some nights. Combine that with all the other extra curricular activities I'm doing and the Olympics, there still isn't enough hours in the day to do everything.

Tuesday - We had our 2nd game of the playoffs in softball and played the 2nd ranked team in the league. They way outclassed us and beat us to a pulp. I did fine in the field, but hit like crap. Was ohnly 1 for 3, 1 RBI, 1 SH.

Wednesday - Did a 6 mile run with a 4 mile tempo aiming for 6:41 pace, but did 6:34 pace at average of 166 bpm for HR.

Our house is still for sale. The main house that we want to buy was put back on the market after being pending a couple weeks ago. We were starting to think of some options so that we could put down on offer on that house. We just heard that another offer is coming in and since our house is still on the market, I guess that house is off limits again.

Friday - Went out for a 5.5 mile easy run today at about 7:3o pace just taking it easy as I have the AFC 1/2 marathon on Sunday. I plan on smoking this race and setting a new 1/2 marathon PR.

In addition to all that, the Olympics have taken a bunch of time out of every day as well. As I said before, I just love the watching them and I usually lose a significant amount of sleep during this time. Since I was so used to not sleep for the past couple months, it's just more of the same. So in 2 weeks, work will definitely be back to normal and the Olympics will be done. I can get back to getting more sleep and doing some of the hobbies I enjoy like playing video games, playing poker and try to do a better job keeping up with this blog (amongst other things).

Relaxation and The Olympics

Ah, the feeling of not working at night during the week feels so good. I'm more relaxed and way less stressed. Even though we haven't released our code to production yet, we can definitely see a brighter light at the end of the tunnel. It's still unofficial and once again the counter is reset to 2 weeks, but hopefully this will be the last time that date gets pushed out. We are winding down our development work, mostly supporting the testers by fixing/enhancing things a bit. I'm hoping that the last 2 week before our release will be relatively normal and much more relaxing. This will give more time for family, working out and the Olympics.

I'm a huge nut of the Olympics. Every 2 years, I basically do not sleep as they are happening. I used to Divo (that would be DVR) everything that was broadcast and watch as much as possible. That's impossible these days as NBC is broadcasting something like 3,600 hours of the Olympics this year on TV and the internet. So I'm forced to only watch prime time stuff this year. I was pretty sure I would get to watch anything with my ridiculous work schedule, but it appears things are starting to calm down just in time.

Just really quick, also did speed work today.
Goal was 1 mile (5:51), 2 mile (6:00), 2x800(5:36) with 400,800,400 for recoveries. I ended up breaking the 2 mile repeat into 2x1 mile as I felt a bit tired. Looking at the results for the day, I should have kept going during the 2 mile interval.
1.00, 5:45.22, 175
1.00, 6:00.50, 174
1.00, 5:56.41, 177
.51, 2:51.30 (5:37), 180
.50, 2:47.72 (5:33), 180

Well, I'm not working late, but it is still nevertheless late. So not getting sleep when I can relax is way different than not getting sleep because of stressing out for work or studying for work related things. Since I usually end up losing sleep during the Olympics, this is expected. I guess I probably shouldn't push things so much tomorrow.

The worst things about staying up late tonight is that I'm trying to catch the end of the men's gymnastics. I'm watching them continue to choke during this last rotation. What a waste. I could've gotten more sleep. Oh well.

The Bowling Master

We had a team building event today at a bowling alley. It was actually a fun time and it was good to take a couple hours out of the day after so many days of being busy. We had so much ridiculous food that I used to be all for. It was all my prior staples. Pizza, chicken tenders, wings, and tons of other fried ridiculousness and topped off with beer and soda. I had some of most of the stuff, but kept myself from going over the top like I usually do when presented with that type of food. I do have an 18 miler tomorrow morning after all.

We bowled one game with 3 5 person teams. Every other frame we had to do something funky like bowl with your opposite hand, no fingers in the holes, between the legs, standing on one leg and blind folded. My team took it down by quite a few pins. We had the 2nd and 3rd overall high scores with me being number 3. Then we all just played a regular game bowling normally. A long time ago I bowled in a league for a season. During this time, I got my own ball and shoes. I showed up today with my bag and everyone thought that I was a ringer. I did manage to bowl over 200 twice I think, but nothing crazy. I had only played 1 time in the last 10 years. So I started this other game and went on a crazy heater. I bowled a game like I don't believe I've ever bowled before. It was awesome. No open frames. I'm confident I've never done that before. Everyone was impressed, but didn't much believe me that I hadn't played in 10 years. I ended up with a 226 having only gotten a spare in the 10th. Check out this line.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
X / / X X X X / X /T

How crazy is that? I guess the pins were just going my way today.

Baby Check Up #3

We had our 3rd baby check up today. I guess it was fairly routine as the doctor asked a few questions and we got to ask a few questions. At our last visit, the doctor used the doppler to find the heart beat. She found it right away and we got the first sounds from our baby. Very exciting. Today, it was quite as quick or simple. Not that the doctor was at all worried, but I was a little nervous as it took her a good minute or two to finally find the heart beat. It seems that "he" is an active guy and running all over the place in there. I say "he" because, of course we don't know yet. I'm thinking "he" and Wendy is thinking "she". The good news is that we were told to call and set up an appointment for our ultrasound between weeks 18-20. We are in week 16 right now. We are going to try set it up at week 19. This is the time that we will find out the sex of the baby, amongst a host of other things. If you have a spare moment, take the poll and cast your vote on what you think the baby will be.

After the appointment I headed down to play the first game of the playoffs in our softball league. We ended up at 6th seed out of 14 teams and we were to play the 12th ranked team. I was fill in coach again and put together a solid line up. I have a feel the team we played may not have been the team that played all year as they played much better than a 12th ranked team. It was a fast, back and forth game and that had a you 3 up, 3 down innings for both teams. By the end of 9, it was 14-14. We went into the 10th and scored 2. We were able to hold them off at the bottom of the inning to pull out the win 16-14. Sweet. I played good tonight. My fielding was solid. My first 2 ABs were pretty weak, and I started 0-2. The next 4 ABs I was 4 for 4 with 4 runs scored, 2 doubles, 2 triples and 5 RBIs. Not too shabby. This is a double elimination tournament and it's probably a good thing as we play the #2 team next week.

Season Stats
G - 13
AB - 66
R - 42
H - 42
2B - 13
3B - 11
HR - 6
RBI - 51
SF - 4
AVG - .636
SLG - 1.439

Tournament Stats
G - 1
AB - 6
R - 4
H - 4
2B - 2
3B - 2
HR - 0
RBI - 5
SF - 0
AVG - .667
SLG - 1.667

The light at the end of the tunnel for my ridiculous schedule is fading in and out. Our date of 8/20 is now in jeopardy and it's going to be up to politics for when we finally get to release our code to production. We will continue to aim for the 20th until we hear differently. After all these months of ridiculous hours, I need to be able to keep my eye on something in the hopes that this does not go on forever. After back to back nights of finishing at 1:30 and getting up by 6, I'm getting pretty fed up. Not that I'm not up late working every night, but the last 2 have been a bit worse. With that said, I guess it's time to get back to the grind.

Weak, Tired Tempo Run

I know I'm sounding like a broken record these days, but these long hours are killing me. I'm always tired and I'm missing workouts. Hopefully things calm down in about 2 weeks, but I've been saying that for a couple months now, so who knows. I was able to make time for a short 6.5 mile run today which contained a 4 mile tempo run. The goal pace was 6:26 per mile. It was quite warm again with some humidity. I didn't feel like I had it today. I was ready to quit after the first mile, but was able to force myself to keep with it. The schedule called for a 3 mile tempo, but decided to do 4 as I have not been getting in the miles lately. I'm finding that the lack of energy is affecting my high end output. I can't quit push myself as hard as I normally do. When I feel like I'm pushing hard, like about a 9 out of 10, I look at the average HR stats and I'm down lower than I feel. I'm hoping that just the tiredness kicking in and once I get back to a normal sleeping pattern that this clears up.

Anywho, the run totals for today for the 4 miles was done at an average pace of 6:22.9 per mile and an average heart rate of 171 bpm. Things could have been worse; could have been better. It was a bit faster than goal pace anyway.
1-6:27.13, 166 bpm
2-6:23.22, 170 bpm
3-6:23.67, 172 bpm
4-6:17.39, 175 bpm

Speed Work - 12 - 400s

The schedule called for 6x400s twice with lots of recovery time The goal pace was about 81.5 seconds. Since it was warm and humid (well, it was for San Diego) and since my sleep pattern and eating pattern have been ridiculous interrupted the past few days, I decided to walk most of the recoveries. There was a 90 second break after each 400 and 150 second break after the first set of 6. This length break allowed me to actually hit my numbers on Monday for a change. I probably could have gone slightly faster. well, looking at the HR numbers, I guess I definitely could have gone faster.
1 - .25, 85s, 165 bpm
2 - .25, 82s, 165 bpm
3 - .25, 80s, 163 bpm
4 - .25, 82s, 164 bpm
5 - .25, 80s, 167 bpm
6 - .25, 80s, 168 bpm
7 - .25, 81s, 171 bpm
8 - .25, 79s, 169 bpm
9 - .25, 82s, 167 bpm
10 - .25, 83s, 165 bpm
11 - .25, 82s, 167 bpm
12 - .25, 79s, 171 bpm

Averaging these all together, the average time was 81.25 per 400. Very close to the goal of 81.5. Sweet!

That's it for today. Back to work.

July Monthly Summary

This will be a short summary. My schedule still does allow me very much spare time to do much or blog about it. Friday night we had a release at work. I started at 7 am and didn't get home until 3 am. I fell asleep about 3:30 and had to be up by 7:00 to go babysit. After a full day of being out, and running around, I logged into work at 9 to start working again. I was so tired, that I just couldn't concentrate. I got some sleep today, but am so far behind that it didn't do too much for me. We had an open house so I had to be out all day. We got home and found that the AC was broken. Not what you want when people are coming over to check out your house. Anyway, so it's late again and it's now time to get working again. Next week will be more of the same. Work all day. Come home and talk to Wendy a bit and have dinner. Work at night.

My exercise routine is at the point of get in what I can get in. My diet is in the crapper. AFC is now less than 2 weeks away. I'm definitely not maximizing my gains right now. There definitely should be a PR in that race, but I don't think it will be as good as it could if work wouldn't be so relentless.

The running number and lifting number were up a bit this month. Definitely lower than I'd like, but I just got in what I was able to get in.


Hitting 2,000 miles for the year is no doing so good lately. I can still likely get it in, but with my work schedule, another taper and recovery period and no race after October to train for, ti will be difficult to get the miles in. Having the 2K challenge will help me though.


Another month, another pound lost. At least this time it was mostly fat. I think the little bit of lifting I did certainly helped. My eating has been really bad thought the last week or so. That likely slight affecting my July numbers and may slightly affect my August numbers. I assume I right the ship again and it will only be a slight glitch this month.

Softball, Running and Work

Tuesday - Played softball today. We normally play 10 handed and don't supply a pitcher. We started this game with 7 and had one player show up in the bottom of the first. There is a max of 5 runs that you can score per inning and by the end of the 2nd inning, it was 10-10. After that, both teams started playing some defense. I played shortstop and 3rd base most of the time. I was actually back in shallow left field to allow myself to try get to as many balls as possible as I was the only one on that side of the field. We started to make some plays and I made some plays as a shortstop and at 3rd. After a huge debacle about losing an inning somewhere, we only ended up playing 8 innings. We won by 8 or so. Not bad for being short handed 2 players. I had a solid game at bat, but nothing great. 4 for 6 with 3 runs, a double, triple, 5 RBIs and a SH. That was the last game of the regular season. I believe we ended 7-5 and were either the highest or the 2nd highest scoring team in the league. Not bad considering I didn't think we'd win any. Next week starts a double elimination tournament. As we have been struggling to field a team lately and since a few people have said they are out next week, we may be in trouble.

Season Stats
G - 12
AB - 60
R - 38
H - 38
2B - 11
3B - 9
HR - 6
RBI - 46
SF - 4
AVG - .633
SLG - 1.417

Wednesday - Ran 8 miles today with a 6 mile tempo. Goal pace was 6:56, which seemed pretty to be a bit slow. Without trying too hard, I averaged 6:38s with my heart rate averaging 169 during the effort. My legs were a bit heavy and my diet and sleep have been horrendous lately. With that that, it wasn't all that hard.
1 - 6:44, 161
2 - 6:43, 165
3 - 6:39, 168
4 - 6:38, 172
5 - 6:38, 172
6 - 6:36, 174

Thursday - Was planning on running to/from work tomorrow, but I'm just too busy at work. I can't afford to lose that much time. As it is, I will be up past midnight again tonight and up before sunrise tomorrow. If I run 20+, I will be useless tomorrow night. I need to work late again and can't afford to lose a night from unproductivety.

Speed Session - 6x800s

Another busy week is happening. Our release date at work just got bumped up by a week or two. That means that somewhat busy work schedule will become a very busy work schedule. As I already have tons of other non work related plans scheduled, I guess all the extra work happens at night for me again.

Today was speed work. The schedule called for 6 800s at 5:36 pace with 1:30 recovery. I'm just not fast enough to hit those times right now. I could do it for 1, 2 or maybe 3, but not 6. With that said, looking at my average HR during each, it looks like I could have pushed harder. Maybe I just need to work on my top effort. But then again, with the schedule I have coming up over the next week or two, maybe I'm better off doing this session.
1 - .50, 2:55, 168
2 - .50, 2:52, 170
3 - .50, 2:50, 171
4 - .50, 2:50, 172
5 - .50, 2:52, 173
6 - .50, 2:47, 174

The tentative running schedule for the rest of the week is tempo on Wednesday, running to/from work on Thursday and potentially the same 23 miler I did this past weekend again on Saturday. Phew! I'm going to be wiped out by the time noon on Saturday rolls around.

We have had some recent activity on the house. No offers yet, but there are people seeing it now and expressing interest. We had an open house on Sunday and have a couple more this week during the week and on the weekend. Fingers crossed. Hopefully we get a reasonable offer so we can start pursuing the houses we want to buy.

There is only 1 softball game for me this week as I have a bye in the competitive league this week. The beer league plays tomorrow. As I will start leaning towards not getting enough sleep again, I'm hoping that my level of play doesn't fall in the crapper again.

I guess that's enough procrastinating for now. I really need to get started working again.

23 Miles on Saturday

For some reason, I've been wanting to do a run from my house, out to and up Iron Mountain and back. On Saturday, as most of the others in my running group had other plans, I decided to stay home and give it a shot. I woke up at 4:30 wanting to get an early start. I ended up hanging around the house until 5:30 as I waited until the sun came up. I'll let the picture below tell most of the story. It was a bit more difficult than I was thinking it was going to be. I ended up running out of water and had to stop on the way. I had to incorporate a few walks breaks at the end in order to get up the last 400 foot hill. It's amazing how much harder things can be after at the 22 mile mark of a run versus the 3rd mile of a run. This run ended up being 2,900 feet of climbing

The plan was for the group to do this run next weekend. I'm wondering how many people will be up for it after seeing this picture.

Running and Softball

Here's a quick recap of the week's info.

Monday - Tough speed session. I struggled on this one. My eating and sleeping were a bit off along with some heat. I just wasn't feeling it. The schedule called for 2x1200 (5:41 pace) and 4x800 (5:36 pace) with a 2 minute recovery between each. I didn't really reach goal pace and the last one was short.
1 - .75, 4:31 (6:01), 175 bpm
2 - .75, 4:21 (5:49), 177 bpm
3 - .50, 2:50 (5:43), 179 bpm
4 - .50, 2:51 (5:41), 179 bpm
5 - .50, 2:47 (5:34), 179 bpm
6 - .17, 0:54 (5:21), 171 bpm

Tuesday - I played softball today in the competitive men's league. Our team is not that great, but were not so bad that we should get shut out. We lost 6-0 in 7 innings. These games almost always run out of time before finishing the full 7 innings. We managed to play the whole thing in 10-15 minutes under the time limit. It was 1-0 after 5 1/2. I think the total time was 40 minutes. Crazy! I managed 2 hits on the night which was probably about 1/3 of the team's total. Sad! Oh yeah, I also lifted today.

Wednesday - The schedule called for a 5 mile tempo run today at 6:41 pace. I tacked on a 3/4 mile warm up and cool down for a total of 6.5 miles. I felt great today. I ran faster than goal pace, picked it up on the last mile and could have easily gone faster. That's very encouraging for the upcoming 1/2 marathon. I may have to adjust my goal pace down a bit. I did the 5 miles in 32:37 which is 6:31/mile and HR was only 168 bpm on average.
1 - 6:33, 162 bpm
2 - 6:36, 164 bpm
3 - 6:33, 168 bpm
4 - 6:39, 170 bpm
5 - 6:16, 174 bpm

Thursday - Tonight was the casual beer league. We had 11 players tonight and the other team only had 8. With that, we were tied 19-19 going into the 9th. We scored 8 and shut them down to win 27-19. That would have been pretty sad if we couldn't beat an 8 handed team. My fielding is way better these days. I'm back to where I should. I had tons of touches tonight and had no errors. I probably had something like 4 put outs and 6-8 assists. By the end of the night, I think I had figured out some of my batting problems and really started driving the ball again. Although, my box score might reflect me hitting a bit better than I actualy did. I was 5 for 5 with 5 runs scored, 3 triples and 1 home run. I had 6 RBIs and 1 sac fly. That helps the season totals a bit.

Season Stats
G - 11
AB - 54
R - 35
H - 34
2B - 10
3B - 8
HR - 6
RBI - 41
SF - 3
AVG - .630
SLG - 1.444

I was off on my work estimation. I have one more week than originally planned. My ridiculously busy schedule is definitely made more busy by all this extra curricular stuff, but it's worked out so far. I still have 2 more weeks of this madness and then hopefully things start to slow down so that I can breath again.

Sorry

Sorry for the lack of recent updates. I'm in the middle of the last push at work. By the end of next week, my 8-10 week ridiculously crazy, busy schedule should start to drop back to my normal 40 hour work week. I'm SOOOOO looking forward to that. I'm excited about getting home at a reasonable time every day and spending time with my wife and child to be. How exciting is that?!?! He/She is the size of a lemon these days. :)

The Best Pre-Run Meal

I did something last night that I try to avoid when I'm in heavy training. In general, I try to eat better and smarter. It turns out, that this may not be enough food, but that's not the point. For the third time now after eating this meal Friday night, I've had an awesome run. The meal is... Domino's Pizza. :) Friday night I had a bit over 1/2 of a large pepperoni pizza from Domino's and just killed the run this morning. The schedule called for 18. I was pushing the pace the entire time and could have easily tacked on more at the end if anyone wanted to do more. It was great. I felt like it didn't take much effort today and my heart rate reflected this feeling as well. I ended up averaging 7:50 over 18 miles and it was easy. Sweet! I guess all this speed work I'm doing is paying off. Plus, the weather today was perfect.

OK, so I'm joking a bit about the pizza, but I'm serious that I'm now 3 for 3 with great runs after the meal. I think the more probably reason behind it is that I don't eat enough generally and I feel better because I have more food in my system. I also think that my body processes food for a long time. I don't think that it takes excess food and stores it as fat nearly as fast as it does for normal people when overeating. I feel like I'm able to draw on food from the night before which gives me more energy. Of course, it's entirely possible that I'm just full of it. Anyway you look at it though, if I think it gives me an edge, then this gives me more confidence which actually does give me an edge.

Not too much to report on the baby yet. I'll give some updates when there are updates to give.

Our house has been on the market for 1 week now and we've had 1 showing so far. Ugh! That's not very encouraging. So far, we have 1 scheduled for tomorrow. Even though I'm a realist, I'm pretty optimistic that we'll sell the house sooner than the market has been indicating we should sell. Until that happens though, the realist in me is preventing me from getting too excited about any of the houses we are looking at. We saw a nice one today that was just put on the market. I have a feeling this one won't be available by the time we decide to finally put some offers out there. Bummer!

A Quick Speed Night

The schedule called for a 3 mile tempo run today along with 3 miles of warm up and cool down. The goal pace of the tempo was 6:26. I did 6:22, 6:28 and 6:12. I could have stayed consistent, but wanted to pick it up on the last one over the last 1/2 mile or so. This averaged out to about 6:21 per mile during the tempo. I was definitely tired at the end, but felt like I didn't completely burn it out. It's a good thing too because less than 12 hours after finishing it, I will be out there doing 10+ to work and then another 10+ on the way home at the end of the day. I think bed time will come very early tomorrow night.

Speaking of which, I need to get ready for the run and turn in early tonight.

Softball

I'm sure I'll be trashed again for missing ATP, but softball duty calls. I had two games scheduled for tonight. As they overlapped, I had to choose. My loyalties are to the beer league as I've been with them longer.

The good news is that I figured out my fielding problems. I've had 3 solid games in the field in a row. The first 2 came with me back at third again and then I played shortstop again tonight and played well. I didn't get as much action as I would have liked, but I fielded and threw well. Now my hitting has gone to crap. I think I'm trying to do too much and keep popping up.

We played short handed tonight in the beer league against a very good hitting team. They are all friendly and we had a good time. We lost by a lot, but were actually ahead after a few innings. It's wasn't the worst experience since they were nice. I ended up 3 for 5 for 4 runs scored, doubles and 2 RBIs. It's not the worst line ever, but it should have been better. Oh well.

Season Stats
G - 10
AB - 49
R - 30
H - 29
2B - 10
3B - 5
HR - 5
RBI - 35
SF - 2
AVG - .592
SLG - 1.306

Update on The Past Few Days

Saturday Run - The group met at Lake Miramar on Saturday. As I live about 3 1/2 miles from there, the plan was to run there, run with the group and then run home as I was scheduled to do 20 on Saturday. I wasn't sure that the group would only want to do 13 though and I had a feeling that meant I would be doing over 20. I wasn't ready for that. As I woke up early, I decided to head to the lake early and put in about 3. Dano and I headed out around Scripps Ranch and put in 1500 feet of climbing/descending. I know that's not tons of elevation compared to some people, but it is more than I usually put in my long runs, especially the 20 milers. I was not fully prepared for this run and only brought along water for the run. I started feeling the lack of food the last 2 miles and really had to push myself to finish. As we hit the cars, Dano hit 17 and I was 1/4 mile short. I was thinking about not being my anal self and just quit, but Dan made me finish. That's good. I needed it. All in all, a good, but challenging workout.


Sunday Gym - I actually made it to the gym for the 2nd time in one week. I had a great workout on Sunday which included lifting legs. As I'm just getting back into it, I'm not pushing myself super hard, but I picked up the intensity a bit this time compared to last time.

Monday Run - Well, I'm sore today from the gym yesterday. My legs are especially feeling it. Just want you want during speed work. The schedule today called for 3x1600 @ 5:51 with 1:00 recovery. I got carried away on the interval and burned myself out. I struggled to maintain on the last one. I really had to force myself to continue as I really wanted to quit. Times were 5:51, 5:43 and 6:11.

In other parts of my life, I'm not sure that I've shared this here or not, but we are looking to buy a bigger house as we are getting ready to get a bigger family. We've been working to get the house ready and we put our house on the market on Saturday. Unfortunately, we had to list it a little lower than we wanted to as another house in the neighboorhood undercut us as they are trying to sell their house at a low price. That sucks as we need the extra money for the new house. Anywho, the pictures and virtual tour should be coming in the next day or two. If anyone is interested in or knows someone else interested, please let me know. It's a great first home and priced lower to match others in the neighborhood.

We are also out there checking out houses that we can expand to. As the market sucks these days, we are not really pushing this aspect until we get some interest in our house. We have found a few that we are interested in, but as houses easily go 1, 2, 3 and more months before selling, we are not letting ourselves get too excited about any options out there yet. As Wendy progesses through her pregnancy, things may become a bit more urgent. For the time being, there is not too much of a hurry.

Things don't slow down the rest of this week. Tomorrow is the gym and softball. Wednesday is a tempo run at 6:26 pace. Thursday I'm running to and from work for my 2nd 20+ mile day of the week. Friday will likely be a rest day, but could potentially be another gym day. As Saturday only drops to 18 miles, I'm thinking it may be a good day for a break.

That's it from here. Talk to you soon.

2008 Heritage Festival 5 Mile Race Report

My parents had been looking for a local 5K to enter for their first race in preparation for their participation in the Sacramento relay marathon. Since Wendy and I were planning on being in town over the 4th of July, I looked around and found a 5 miler within 30 minutes from their house. They were super excited about entering a race we all signed up. As long as you signed up by July 3rd, the entry fee was $20. You can't beat that. We even got a t-shirt and a timing chip. Two days before the race we went down to get our numbers and both Roni (my sister) and Wendy decided to enter as well. We ended up with 5 of us entering the race. The Smidt's (and 1 Shevlin) were planning on taking down the race. Ok, maybe not. I was shooting for 32-34 minutes. My Dad was aiming for 1 hour. My Mom was going for 1:05 and Roni and Wendy were hoping for under 1:25.

This was definitely a low key race. We got there a little less than 1 hour early and there weren't many people around. As we got closer to 20-30 minutes before the race it starting picking up. We hung around for a bit just chilling and trying to convince my mom that she wouldn't get lost on the course. Apparently she had nightmares that she got lost.

Fortunately, the weather cooperated as much as you could hope for in Virginia during summer. The race started at 7:45. It was humid, but overcast and the temperature wsa 73.

With a couple minutes to spare I headed out for some pickups around 6:30 pace. If all went well, I was going to aim for 6:30s and try to pick it up at the end if I had anything left. We all got on the street by everyone else I said my good byes and good lucks and headed to the front. I couldn't get all the way up there and there were people in front of my that had no business whatsoever being up there. So after a bunch of maneuvering, I was able to get 1 back from the front row. As it turned out the chips we were all wearing were for the finish only. So everyone else lost a few seconds as their time was gun time.

The gun goes off and wear are flying. A group of 8-10 runners were just in front of my and some guy decked out in all JMU colors lead the pack. There were a few others around me, but I was right there near the leaders. Very cool! I felt great. I looked down at my watch and saw that was I doing about 5:25. Oops! I really forced myself to slow down as there was no way I could maintain that pace. At mile one I was falling back some from the leaders (which is a good thing) and the guy at the marking said 5:55 (it was a hair short on the GPS). Crap! What a rookie mistake. I know you are supposed to start a bit easier and then pick it up. I just got caught up in the moment. But since I was there, I decided to keep pushing it to see what I could do. During the next mile I was feeling it. I knew I was in for a battle. I had slowed a bit to a 6:22, and I was tired. I could tell I was slowing and my HR was out of control. The next 2 miles I tried with all my might to maintain focus and to continue to push myself even though I wanted to walk. I did 6:37 for each. About 3-4 people passed me from the first mile to the end. So even though I was slowing, I knew I was still pushing it pretty good. About 300-400 meters from the end I make this left hand turn and see this hill facing me. Ugh! I didn't want to see that with how I was feeling. I pushed up the hill, made a right hand turn and saw the finish line and it was down hill. I picked up the pace and pushed towards the line. I heard someone coming from behind and pushed it a bit more. I crossed the line at 32:18 for a 6:28 pace. I was 26th out of 620 runners and 4th in my age group. The top 3 were paid. What a bummer. Unfortunatlely, I'm in the fastest and most difficult age group. Next year I'll graduate to the 2nd or 3rd fastest age group. I would have been 2nd or 3rd in the other age group. Anyway, here are my splits and heart rate. No wonder I felt tired. I guess I was pushing pretty hard.

1 - 5:59, 178 bpm
2 - 6:22, 185 bpm
3 - 6:37, 185 bpm
4 - 6:37, 186 bpm
5 -6:32, 188 bpm

Thinking back, if I started smarter, I really believe I would have been closer to and likely under 32:00. I think if I did 6:30s for the first 2 or 3 miles that I would have had enough energy to really push the last couple. Instead, I was just hanging on. Even with that silly mistake, I'm still very happy with my result. I didn't know I could run that fast for that long.

So I crossed the line, got a couple cups of water and then started jogging backwards looking for my Dad. I found him somewhere between miles 3-4. We was doing the Jeff Galloway. He was jogging 3 minutes and walking 1 minute. He was ahead of pace and feeling pretty good. He was a bit suprised at the speed he was going. I tried to prepare everyone for the fact that their time would be faster than anticipated given the race atmosphere. It still caught him off guard. I tried to make sure he didn't drop off the pace we were going and gave words of encouragement. Before we came to the hill I prepared him for what he was about to see. We headed to the finish coming in at 57:19, well under his goal.

I turned right around and headed back to find my Mom. I didn't expect her to be too far back so I pushed pretty hard to get to her to catch her before she had to see the hill. I found her between 4 and 5, before she could see the hill. She looked tired, but was ahead of goal pace and feeling OK. I gave her the same talk I gave my Dad about her pace and the hill. She was mostly walking, but was throwing in a few runs. As we made the right hand turn after the hill she started to jog. My Dad was there and the three of us headed to the finish line running at approximately a 10:00 pace. She finished at 1:02:47.

I turned around again to look for Wendy and Roni. I found them somewhere around mile 4 and we walked it on in. There were both feeling good, for the most part. They were ahead of pace too. The pace was a little slower then Wendy usually goes and she was staying with Roni the whole way. They started a bit fast, slowed down bit the next 2 miles and then Wendy picked up the pace while telling Roni it was the same speed. :) I told them about the hill and when we finished and made that right hand turn, my parents were there. The 5 of us headed to the finish line together. They finished at 1:17:27.

All in all a great performance by everyone. Everyone had fun and beat the time that they were expecting. I definitely enjoy doing races that I'm not out there to burn it up and do it for myself. Even though I did that today, I was able to still do the race with other people at their pace. It is so much more enjoyable doing that. Maybe as I begin to get out of shape next year as Wendy and I start a new chapter in our lives, I can put in a race here and there with some people slower than me and just enjoy it and help them. We will see.

As we were walking back to the car, my Dad and I found someone handing out free Drumsticks (the ice cream cones). Score! How awesome is that. That was a nice little treat after the race. My Dad was already looking for his next race. He picked up a flyer for another local race. It's a 10 miler about a month later. LOL, they are hooked.

Race Results
A local write up. I almost made the paper. I was just to the left of the camera at the start and missed that picture. Also finishing 1 out of the money prevented me from getting my name ther.e

June Monthly Summary

I did a 6 mile run today with a 4 mile tempo with a goal pace of 6:41 for the tempo. I felt pretty good during the run. I definitely felt the pace, but could have gone faster if needed. The actual pace was a bit quicker than goal pace. The 4 mile tempo average took 26:05 and I average 173 bpm. That's a 6:31.4 minute per mile average. That included some hills as it was done on the street. Here are the splits:

1. 8:31.77, 139 bpm
2. 6:28.47, 167 bpm
3. 6:43.38, 173 bpm
4. 6:29.97, 176 bpm
5. 6:23.62, 177 bpm
6. 7:52.52, 167 bpm

I know I'm way behind in providing my monthly summary for June. My schedule has been hectic along with being out of town at the beginning of the month is the reason for the delay. The numbers are off this month since I wasn't doing any heavy duty training, June was spent recovering from the Rock and Roll Marathon and a very hectic work schedule that caused me to lose lots of sleep and not be able to devote as much time for working out as I would normally like. For comparison, see June's summary.

Even though June's miles seemed way down, I still managed about 125 miles. That's not too bad for a down month.

I'm still on pace for my first 2,000 mile year, but barely. Since I've been so busy and taper/recovering from a marathon, I'm not barely on pace. I hope to step it up for the next couple months to give myself some buffer for when I taper for the next race. Plus, after October, I'm predicting that I won't be training for anything for some time. I guess the motivation of getting to 2,000 may help me at the end of the year when I'm not training for a race.

Looking at the weight numbers from June, it looks like I manage to lose muscle and gain a bit of fat. I guess that is expected when I don't go to the gym, don't exercise as much and eat very poorly. July should be slightly better and August noticeably better. With that said, I'm continuing to lose weight. Is that a good thing? I'm not sure. I think it's helping me to get faster, but I'm definitely weaker.