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.