Week Summary

Well, it has been a great week for running and working out. Tonight's run means that I have either worked out at the gym or ran 27 of the last 28 days including 18 straight. For me, that is amazing! Just 2 short years ago I weighted in at 250 lbs and was terribly out of shape.

It has been a struggle to get back to my running level before my foot injury. Until tonight, I haven't been able to go much more then 2 miles without having to stop for a bit. Tonight I completed my 5K training run without stopping once. This run really made me feel like it is indeed coming back.

Yesterday's race went pretty good. As good as I had expected that's for sure. I have another race coming up this Saturday. The Pensacola Runners Association (PRA) Bear Lake Challenge. A 4 mile trail race. It is also the annual membership meeting where the next group of officers are elected. Should be a good day.

There is one thing that I need to fix though. I need to figure out how to get back into my early morning runs. I just can't seem to get my ass out of bed any more! What the hell!!! Right now I am getting my weekday mileage at the gym on the treadmill, the elliptical, and the recumbent. I NEED the road mileage! I will overcome this, I will!

Race Report

Tiffany H and myself

St John's Sunset 5K

Well, this was my second race back from my injury. I'm still not where I was before I got hurt. I'm not sure why it is taking so long to get my endurance back. I suppose it is normal, but since I am new to all this running, I haven't got anything to compare it to.

My plan was to go out strong and go for as far as I could at a relatively fast pace. I did just that. At about 1.55 miles I had to stop. From that point on, I did a kinda run fast, walk a minute, then run fast again. I probably repeated this process 4 times.

You might wonder why I was running this way. Well here it is. I have a very hard time running at a slower pace. For me, what works is to just go out hard and take a minute break and repeat. To be honest, I first 'saw' this in action at the Pensacola Beach Half Marathon. There was this guy that I keep catching up to. He would run for a distance and then walk for a bit. He repeated this I don't know how many times. It must have worked for him as he ended up beating me.

Now back to the race. I met up with Tiffany H. from DailyMile.com. She and her husband are both in the Navy and stationed at Corry Field. I ended up finishing in under 28 minutes. By far not my best time, LOL! All in all though, I'm fine with the results.

Here are the official results:

Place - 148/553
Div/Tot - 6/19
Finish - 27.38
Pace - 8.54

Finally Friday!

What a week! One word - wow! Glad this one is over! Today was Friday the 13th. It didn't take long for things to go wrong. At about 10:30, my whole network at school shut down. Seems we had a loop. For those that don't know what a network loop is, it's when a data cable gets connected back to itself. It took over 2 hours to find it. I have well over a 1000 data drops in my school. You can imagine how hard it is to find a single loop. But, I narrowed my thinking down to student computers. I know, why do we always think it is the students. Well, just listen. We began to look at rooms where I have more then one student computer. Finally after searching about 12 rooms, we happened upon one of the art rooms. This one has 2 student computers. Sure enough, we found the loop. We didn't see any students on the computers, so we thought, oh well, won't find out who did that. The art teacher next door asked me what was up and I told her. That's when she said it! Yep, it wasn't a student being malicious, it was her. She was trying to find out why a network printer on one of our mobile laptop carts wasn't working and used that drop to test it. Apparently, there was a data cable there that wasn't connected to a device. She took the end not connected and plugged in back into the port. Only problem was the the other end was already connected to a port. Thus a loop! WOW! Was that a stressful couple hours or what? So glad we found it as soon we did!

Ok, that wasn't running related, but I'll tell ya, I sure the hell was running around! Tomorrow is the St John's Sunset 5K in Pensacola. It will only be my second race since being able to run again. Am I ready? No, not to do well enough to place or anything. I placed 2nd last year in my AG! They have the best awards. Who knows, maybe I'll push hard and pull something out. Could happen!

I have had another great workout week this week. Hit the gym every day so far. Considering my gym is about 25 minutes from here, I only go during the week after work. I have recorded 34 miles already this week. After the 5K tomorrow and a run on Sunday, I have a chance to have my best week yet for mileage.

I'll try to post a race recap tomorrow or Sunday.

Remember, "Real athletes run, others just play games"!