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Jacksonville, FL, United States
In Life as well as in running the secret is Pace.

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

What to do?


Rest week… What is that?

I am now somewhat at the mercy of the coach we hired for Judi.  This was a calculated decision we made to keep my natural tendency to over-train cause me to drag Judi along with me.

With last week's 40 miler behind us (relative) rest was on the agenda

Our training for the weekend was to be limited to an hour run on Saturday and 30 minutes on Sunday.

We did pretty well..  just adding a little Core on Friday after work and an hour spin on Saturday but it still left us with time and energy on our hands…  so we did other stuff

We stocked up on wine (we had a coupon!)


Went out!! On Saturday night!!!


It was a Pub Run/Fundraiser for a local charity Marathon High.  Marathon High is a non-profit program under the Galloway Training Program. It is a free, school-based, long-distance running program open to all teens in grades 9-12.


The evening was themed "Dress up as your High School self"

I dug my old letter jacket out of the closet…  it still fits well enough:


We did clock some impressive mileage…  My Dodge broke the 6 figure barrier:


And Sunday dinner must have smelled delicious as evidenced by Jimmy's drool


Back to real training this week and none too soon…

And I'm just itching to race again too…  I think I'll sign up for this:


Tuesday, February 21, 2012

a Forty



No… not that kind of forty…   this kind.

We were at the trailhead…  just before dawn… to set off on what would be our second "do it yourself" Ultra


Our route was pretty simple…  Down through the Guana reserve…  on the east side roads which we had never traversed…


The loop the Guana single-track trails


Then run south on the beach to Vilano…


And finally a beeline through Guana again back to the car…

We had to be back by 5 PM due to parental responsibilities.

The first few miles we kept it steady…


We threw in some walk breaks…


And yes…  that is a cotton t-shirt… and yes it was a mistake to wear it…  and yes I should know better.

The single-track was nice…  cool and shady

The beach was miserable tailwind going south was stifling… and I'd forgotten how steeply canted the beach is in Vilano…  even at low tide.

Inexplicably I felt really good for the last leg…  Judi had some back issues which forced some long walk breaks


But she kept smiling….

And we made it back to the trailhead at about 1630…

40 miles covered.

Some sore feet

A sore back

A few black toenails

But overall we survived




Monday, February 6, 2012

It's a day at the beach


This weekend we started a taper…

I'm not a big taper fan but…. Well you see Judi has a coach

This race that we have signed up for http://geminiadventures.com/new/?page_id=130 is long…  basically a weeklong journey of Ultramarathons… Judi has had never even run an ultramarathon

I am not very scientific in my approach to training. 

My philosophy is:

1.      Trash your legs
2.      Go easy to recover
3.      Repeat

While I can live with wearing myself down to a nub…  doing that to the one I love is not recommended

So we got her a coach…  and well..  like all good coaches she interviewed Judi and asked about her race schedule.  We had the Ironhorse 50 miler down on 19 February…  well…  sickness and injury in December stole our confidence and well..  we never got around to signing up… the race is now full and we are not in..  the training schedule Judi has is busy preparing her for the 50 miler.

We have had a very good January…  and are in pretty good shape…  and now Judi finds herself in Taper mode for a 50 miler we are not going to do.

I have a plan for how to handle this situation…  more on that at a later date.

Back to this weekend.

Taper = 3ish hours.  As both of my blog readers knows…  I like to run in different and interesting places.  A quick check of the Weather…  another to the tide table…  a measurement from gmaps and we had a plan.

Straight down the beach from the public parking at 16th Ave South in Jax beach to Mickler's landing in Ponte Vedra was a 16 mile round trip. 

Low tide was at 1118 so we got started around 9.

It's funny… that although I did not think of this at the time I planned the route this was the exact spot where we started our first ever run together almost two years ago.


About mile 2 I got a call about the bike I had listed on craigslist…  it would sell in the afternoon.

It was a beautiful sunny February day on the beach… 


When I would fall too far behind Judi would slow down and encourage me to catch back up.

It was hot tho… and while we negative split the run by a good bit I was feeling kinda wiped out at the end.   I did not really expect to need to worry about electrolyte replacement on a 16 mile run in February.  I was pretty well overheated by the time we finished.

I even got out in the water for a bit.



We got in a quick stretch


Sunday was a 90 minute run…  9.3 miles for me… another negative split run with 10s on the way out and 8:45s on the way back.

We had our own little Super Bowl party…  for our dessert we made chocolate covered peanut butter chocolate chip cookie dough footballs


Touchdown!

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Totals January 2012




Run: 184 miles
Bike: 175 miles
Swim: 0
Strength/core: 370 minutes

Total # of workouts = 50

Run mileage is back up to where it needs to be.

I have a profound lack of speed…  due to the lack of speedwork

But (pun as always intended)

Most importantly my glutes/back/hammies are better…

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