Screws In My Coffee

Well all of the RunTex Fit City training and Nike club runs are over.  I had such a fun time running and going to the bars after the training runs.  I do not drink alcohol and do not go to bars.  It was a refreshing twist to be in a hot and sweaty crowd of runners in a bar in Austin.

I ran in 100 degree heat from July 19 until last night training for the Nike Human Race on August 31, 2008.  Last year I struggled to run back to back 10 minute miles on a tread mill.  Last night I ran 7.02 miles around Lady Bird Johnson Lake from Mile 0 to the MoPac Brige to I-35 in 1:01:56.

Below is the pace that I ran each mile.

• Mile 1 at 8:07/mile
• Mile 2 at 8:15/mile
• Mile 3 at 8:54/mile
• Mile 4 at 8:29/mile
• Mile 5 at 8:25/mile
• Mile 6 and 7 9:48/mile (my cool down run)

The RunTex coach and Coach Ware (HT track) say that stress training helps make you run stronger. I have never measured my running until I started the Nike Human Race training. Now I have a Garmin 405 and it makes a big difference when I see how I am running. When I run hard the first few miles I stress my body. I still have to run but I will be running stressed. Later in the run I can feel my body recovering in the mile just after I run hard.  My body will learn to recover and theI will develop a long distance pace. I did this last night but I did not think that I would keep the fast pace for as long as I did.

For now I am happy to be running faster and finishing 6 or 7 miles with energy. The trail training will be a new adventure in pushing for further distance.

My next training class is the  Bandera Trail 100k Race in January.  I start my Rouge training on September 13, 2008.  I trained for a year to get in shape to do endurance running.  I was inspired to do this by a co-worker Stephanie Bond-Huie.  She ran a 50 mile race last year.  Last year I was struggling to keep up with her on our 4 mile training runs from Huston-Tillotson where we work down Chicon to LBJ Lake and back.  This year if I run less that 4 miles I feel cheated.  I love running.

I feel very greatful to have a community of runners and coaches to help me reach my running goals.  I am also happy that at the age of 56 I can run like I do and it is fun.  For my training for the 100k trail race I am going to add yoga classes.  The RunTex training included yoga instructors at the start of several sessions.  I benefited from being asked to twist my body in goofy positions.  I can not do yogo very well at thsi point but I can already see how proper structured streaching benefits running.

I did something that amazed me last evening.  The RunTex training session finished with another 2 mile stress run.  During a stress run you run about 70-80% the first mile and then you run was fast as you can for the second mile.  This training is for running under stress at the end of the race.  The first time that I did it a few weeks ago I ran the 2 miles in 15 minutes and when I finished I was really tired.  This time I ran the 2 miles in 15 minutes 10 seconds and I was not exhausted like the the first time.  I rested and talked to members of the class and when the coach said for the class to do a cool down jog I decided to run some more. 

I looked up and saw some Nike Human Race pace setters with a group of runners at the water coolers.  I decided that I would run with them.  After we started runing I thought we would run at a 10 minute mile pace but after talking with a sweeper I found out I was running with the 9 minuted mile pace group.  I ran with them for about four miles before stopping back at mile 0.  I was really proud of myself that I had run a fast 2 miles and then run 4 more miles at a 9 minute pace. 

My .29 warm up was 9.05 per mile. My 2 mile pace was 7:37 per mile.  My 3.95 mile run with the Nike group was 9:13 per mile. My overall pace for the total 6.24 miles was 8:42 minute mile.

I have a web site that I use to write about my experiences with farming and rual land management. The WiFi Cowboy web site has banner ads from Google. Today I noticed that Hostess was the ad displaying on the site. I had to laugh at what was going on because here I am writing about healty food and there is an ad for Hostess products.

I am experimenting with Google Adsense so I am learning how the ads appear on pages based on the text on the page.  I am also experimenting with the Wifi Cowboy web site by using pure XHTML 1.0 Strict standards.

Training Data from my Garmin Fore Runner 405 can be viewed online. I still remember last summer barely being able to run 4 miles in the heat in 45 minutes.  Now I am running 5 in under 45 minutes. Data collection does have it’s benefits even when you are measuring just your own personal performance.

This training run was very humid and I did not feel like running right before the start. Running with 45 other people started out with the 9 minute 5 mile group gave me a lot of motivation to just do it. What surprisies me about running the hills in Travis Heights is that I thought that the elevation gain would be more than the elevation gain on the 24th street hill on the Starbucks training run.