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.

In My Defense...

So I've been called out. In a post by Michelle she basically said that I've been slacking off and not upholding my reputation. See I've missed the last 2 weeks of MarcFit ATP. I have legitimate excuses so far. Last week I was out of town. Tonight I had a softball game. As it turns out, I will be playing softball games the next couple months on Tuesday so they will have plenty of time to drag my name down. No baby excuses for me yet. I'm sure there will be plenty coming in the future, but that is not my reason for "slacking" at this point.

I guess I will need to bump up my numbers just to make sure I keep my reputation. Tomorrow is a 6 miler witha 4 mile tempo run at 6:41 pace. It sounds like my project at work will be delayed a little bit so I may be able to start my commute runs again next week to get my weekly mileage back up to 50-70 miles per week. Plus this weekend is the first of 5 20 milers in preperation for St. George in October. I guess to truly redeem myself, I will need to start doing ESEs on my own.

I started playing softball in a competitive mens league at Poway Sportsplex. These games are timed and you only play 55 minutes. We were home and likely in the last inning. We were up by 6-4 with 2 outs. A bunch of hits and a couple errors later, we were down 5. WTF!?! We scored 3 in the home half to lose by 2. How much does that suck. To make matters worse, I hit like complete crap. I was 0-3 with 2 popups and a groundout. I should have stayed home and worked.

A Recap of the Past Week

Now that I'm back in town it's time to catch everyone up on what has happened over the past week. Wendy and I went back to Virginia to visit my family and break the pregnancy news to them. Before we took off, we hit the Lake for a quick speed session as I wasn't sure what I'd be doing when we got to Virginia. The schedule called for the following intervals in meters (and pace) with 200 meter recoveries: 1200(5:41), 1000(5:39), 800(5:36), 600(5:31), 400(5:26), 200(5:21).
.76, 4:32.13, (5:59) 172 bpm
.13, 1:38.33, 144 bpm
.63, 3:31.95, (5:37), 175 bpm
.13, 1:43.90, 151 bpm
.50, 2:50.47, (5:40), 175 bpm
.13, 1:43.38 155 bpm
.38, 2:00.57 (5:17), 177 bpm
.13, 1:38.05 161 bpm
.25, 1:22.65 (5:24), 175 bpm
.13, 1:42.23 159 bpm
.13, 0:38.57 (5:01) 172 bpm
I was pretty close on most of the numbers. It was mid 80s out there which may have slowed me down a bit.

Our plane was scheduled to leave at 10:15 pm, but it was delayed nearly 45 minutes. That sucked. Unfortunately for me, I can't sleep much on planes. I guess it's just too uncomfortable. I manage to get somewhere around 30-60 minutes combined sleep on the trip and was pretty wiped by the time we arrived and drove an hour to my parents house. We wanted to break the news to the family then, but some people were still sleeping. We had breakfast and talked for about an hour and gave up. We headed to bed for a couple hours of sleep. Everyone was awake and around when we woke up, but it's hard getting everyone together in one room with the kids running around and the family getting things ready to head out on the boat. We were going to tell them by showing them pictures from my last marathon and at the end we slipped in the picture of the EPT and pictures from the sonogram. Right when I pulled out the pictures, everyone but one sister and my dad left. We figured we might was well go ahead. When the last race picture came up, my dad got distracted by something and my sister was the only one to see the real picture. She was very happy and excited for us, but tried to keep quiet so it would be a surprise for everyone else. Slowly but surely, everyone finally saw the pictures and found out the news. It feels so much better not having to keep that a secret anymore. Phew!

The next couple days were spent just hanging out with the family. It was good seeing everyone again. But as I expected, my running suffered. Between the lack of sleep and the energy exerted out on the water and the heat and humidity, my speed session on Saturday which included a 5 mile tempo run at 6:46 pace didn't really materialize. I ended up getting in 3 pretty weak runs on both Wednesday and Thursday. Friday was the 5 mile race in the Heritage Festival 5 Miler. I will put up my race report for this race in the next day or two.

My attitude towards running definitely suffered over the past week. Marc Fit ended up meeting for a run on Sunday. That worked out perfectly for me as I had to do a 17 miler and missed it on Saturday. I felt my time would be better spent sleeping in though. So I missed the weekend long run. Today I was still not completely into it, but was able to get myself out there for today's speed session. The schedule called for 5x1000 at 5:36 pace with 400 recoveries. I was a bit off today as I'm still getting back into it. Even with that, I'm still pretty happy with the results today.

.62 miles, 3:41(5:54 min/mile), 173 bpm
.62 miles, 3:35(5:46 min/mile), 175 bpm
.62 miles, 3:39(5:53 min/mile), 174 bpm
.63 miles, 3:34(5:40 min/mile), 177 bpm
.62 miles, 3:25(5:33 min/mile), 180 bpm

My schedule is not going to be any better than it was for the past month for the next week or three. I pretty much need to spend every waking hour working as I aim to meet a nearly impossible goal that is two weeks away. During this time I'm also playing in 2 softball leagues that will take up time 2 nights a week. I need to get in 2 speed sessions a week along with some other running. We are getting our house ready to put on the market on Saturday. Unfortunately, there is a lot involved with doing this. We are looking for another house to move into which also takes time. Somehow I'm thinking I may not have time to get in my runs to/from work at least once per week. Ugh! Bring on the caffeine!

And saving the best for last (anyone still reading?). We went to the doctor today for the 2nd checkup. We are now 12 weeks in. We got to hear the heartbeat of our child today. That is so cool. Knowing that little guy (probably a girl) is in there growing like mad is such an exciting thing. We can't wait to meet him in 6 months.

Back Home

It's good to be back home. I took 5 days off as I went back home to visit the family. Other than logging in here to post my message about Wendy's pregnancy, I pretty much unplugged during this time. It was great spending time and catching up with family. It was also nice to disconnect with the rest of the world for a bit. Now that I'm back home, I have a back log of things to get through. In the days ahead I'll get you a brief recap of my week to include my race report from the Heritage Fesitval 5 Mile run that my family participated in. For the time being, I'm just trying to get caught up on tons of email and other miscellaneous things. Back with more tomorrow.

Breaking News

The MarcFit family is going to expand once again. Now that the immediate family has been told, it's time to start spreading the word.



Wendy is expecting. We are super excited. It's finally sunk in that this is really happening. So far we are enjoying the journey and are looking forward to our new adventure. Other then some nausea, tiredness and some minor things here and there, the mother-to-be is doing well so far.

Woohoo!

Time for a Break

After 6 weeks of continuous stress and tiredness, I had a nice, productive, relaxing weekend. I work for one day this week and then head out on vacation for a few days. I get to spend time with my entire immediate family. There's always bad eating and some drinking going on along with lots of time spent out on the boat boat skiing and tubing (not while drinking though ;) ). This summer may be a bit different. At least three of us will be doing a 5 mile race on the 4th. That may put a damper on the eating and drinking. This is my parents' first race and they are super psyched for it. I'm sure they are going to eat well and not drink. If I'm running it with them, anything goes, but there's a chance I may try burn it out. If that's the case, I can't fill the tank with pizza and beer and expect to perform that well. I could actually do that and complete destroy my 5 mile PR. Well, I've never run 5 miles before during a race, but I have done an 8K a couple times. That is essentially 5 miles (just a bit shy). This was years ago before I became a runner. My PR is 43 minutes. (You can see all my results on my Athlinks page.) I'm not sure what the course looks like and just how hot and humid it will be on Friday, but I'm expecting somewhere around 33 minutes if I burn it out. So I think I could run the entire thing backwards and beat my best 8K time. But then again, it might just be more enjoyable to take it easy and enjoy the race with my family. We'll see.

I hope everyone has a great 4th of July. I may not have another entry until next weekend. Good luck to all of you doing races this coming week.