Today was an action filled day work-wise to say the least and basically going strong from 7:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. left me with limited time to run, however a little bit before 3:00 p.m. I found a nice 30 minute break to go out and hit the road. Since 3 p.m. is when the high school across the street from my neighborhood lets out, I figured I would stay in the neighborhood rather than having to dodge all the pedestrian traffic on the sidewalks of Bouldercrest. Looking back this was a bad decision given the combination of a the multiple hills in my neighborhood and this being my first 27:30 run. I completed the run, but was exhausted and a little bit sore from the ups and downs in the neighborhood and I am looking forward to dropping back to 25:00 tomorrow.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Monday, October 27, 2008
Texaco Trot
Something I have wanted to do, that was actually June's idea, since starting with the running outdoors is make the trek in my area of town from my neighborhood to the Texaco. This would violate the 25 minutes total running so I started a little different today by walking to the front my neighborhood and then starting the trot from there based on what I thought a 25 minute run would feel like.
I started out at the beginning of my neighborhood and began off on the journey for what is about a 1.25 mile distance up to the Texaco. Those who have never witnessed don't know, but it's a bit of a surprise what you could run in to on the way up Bouldercrest. There are some condemned apartments that are being sold off building by building which used to be for the most part low-income housing which some crime occurred in. Since the closure I've deemed it much safer to venture in to these sections of town, but six months ago I probably would have stayed away from the area, especially considering that I am carrying my iPhone for the tunes and the mapmyrun.com app and knowing that some good stolen from area houses made their way back to this establishment.
The best part of the run was that at 25 minutes, I stopped. I stopped not because I had to but that is a part of my plan and there's no sense in having a plan if I'm just going to do what I want. Stopping at the plan left me with a nice cool-down walk of about a half mile. In addition to moving the line further, this was my first run in brisk air. I had some concerns about the cool weather but after about 5-10 minutes of moving along it proved to be a non-issue, except maybe for a parched throat from inhaling the cool air, definately not camel related. At this point I'm really excited about the first time I'm able to make it all the way to the East Atlanta Village, about 2.5 to 3 miles, possibly grabbing a victory pint, and heading back on the run home but that will be a while.
After the run I sat down to a good afternoon of work knocking out some migration of data and setting up of some new authentication servers before going to meet some of the Hattiesburg crew that's in town for training with June. Oh yeah, you guessed it, Blue Frog Cantina! It is in fact a Monday which has the added benefit of the dollar taco night action. I was very proud of myself and Vic for stopping at the two-PBR mark. I believe all three enjoyed the tacos and June really enjoyed the pomegranate margaritas providing entertainment for the entire party.
I started out at the beginning of my neighborhood and began off on the journey for what is about a 1.25 mile distance up to the Texaco. Those who have never witnessed don't know, but it's a bit of a surprise what you could run in to on the way up Bouldercrest. There are some condemned apartments that are being sold off building by building which used to be for the most part low-income housing which some crime occurred in. Since the closure I've deemed it much safer to venture in to these sections of town, but six months ago I probably would have stayed away from the area, especially considering that I am carrying my iPhone for the tunes and the mapmyrun.com app and knowing that some good stolen from area houses made their way back to this establishment.
The best part of the run was that at 25 minutes, I stopped. I stopped not because I had to but that is a part of my plan and there's no sense in having a plan if I'm just going to do what I want. Stopping at the plan left me with a nice cool-down walk of about a half mile. In addition to moving the line further, this was my first run in brisk air. I had some concerns about the cool weather but after about 5-10 minutes of moving along it proved to be a non-issue, except maybe for a parched throat from inhaling the cool air, definately not camel related. At this point I'm really excited about the first time I'm able to make it all the way to the East Atlanta Village, about 2.5 to 3 miles, possibly grabbing a victory pint, and heading back on the run home but that will be a while.
After the run I sat down to a good afternoon of work knocking out some migration of data and setting up of some new authentication servers before going to meet some of the Hattiesburg crew that's in town for training with June. Oh yeah, you guessed it, Blue Frog Cantina! It is in fact a Monday which has the added benefit of the dollar taco night action. I was very proud of myself and Vic for stopping at the two-PBR mark. I believe all three enjoyed the tacos and June really enjoyed the pomegranate margaritas providing entertainment for the entire party.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
25 Minutes...
Today was my first day of time based running and for the first time in several years I ran for 25 minutes without stopping. I added some length to my previous route to accomplish this, going one street further on Bouldercrest than yesterday's run. A funny thing about the run is that my mileage came up shorter this time despite adding an additional block to the run. I guess the +/- three meters with GPS really adds up, so I'll keep an eye on it to see what the averages amount to over time. Tomorrow will be a rest day for me, although it's very tempting to do a 1.2 mile run just to put myself at 10 miles total for the week.
My plans starting Monday will be to blend two 27:30 runs into the mix which shouldn't be too difficult at this point, but better to take it easy versus burning myself out. Not too much else going on today, so I'm off to trivia for the guilty pleasure of PBRs and Chicken Cheese Nachos at the Blue Frog.
My plans starting Monday will be to blend two 27:30 runs into the mix which shouldn't be too difficult at this point, but better to take it easy versus burning myself out. Not too much else going on today, so I'm off to trivia for the guilty pleasure of PBRs and Chicken Cheese Nachos at the Blue Frog.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Change is everywhere...
After tossing the idea around for quite a while and the all-mighty agenda James has pushed upon me I have decided to start a blog. After all, why not? I've made some pretty wild changes this week; what could one more hurt.
After months of dealing with a phone that worked on its own schedule - effing treo - and June's phone breaking I took the plunge into life with a digital leash. As of Sunday evening I am officially the owner of an iPhone so I'm connected to that thing called the Internet at all times. It was a difficult decision to purchase the phone because for months I have been dogging owners of the device. I was almost certain I would catch some shit for my previous attitude towards having the Internet on my phone.
Anyways, the phone is just a segueway into my post. After putting down the squares in March 2008, to no surprise, I put on quite a bit of weight and became really lazy. Apparently quitting smoking isn't all it's cracked up to be. To curtail this onset of laziness and general ill-feeling I decided to hit the treadmill and see what I could do. After several weeks I started seeing some great progress and finally got within a normal BMI. Then, one night of clang-clang-clang and thinking I could handle the squares only when I had a few cold ones, I fell off the wagon. With that came less running and the second round of laziness. The first time I put the squares down I used Chantix, but that is not an option now because I am a student pilot and there is a strict ban on the drug, something about seizures or some nonsense like that. So this time I must do it on my own. Getting back in to my running groove has helped, and I've used some of my running goals to assist me with that.
This time around with the running, given the change in seasons and just up for a new challenge in general, I have decided to hit the road. I couldn't live in a worse neighborhood terrain-wise for running as it is composed of multiple hills and makes for a very rough 1.8 miles. For the last three weeks I have been running the neighborhood and haven't seen much improvement. I can complete the 1.8 miles just fine, but at the end I am beat, so today I decided to change things up a little bit and venture out of my neighborhood. This is where the iPhone comes in. With the iPhone AppStore comes a sweet app called iMapMyRun which posts your runs and maps them to http://www.mapmyrun.com. This is particularly helpful because other than painfully mapping my runs on google maps and guessing, which I do not like to do, I had no clue how fast, how far, etc. Today I completed a 2.47 mile run in 23 minutes and some change which was very encouraging. The best part about the run is that I could have probably gone further. So after the run I sent the link of to James, Brad and crew and went to the sage of running himself James for some much needed advice on what I needed to do goal wise to continue. James provided some advice on running based on time and throw everything else out the window. So tomorrow 25 minutes here I come!
That's enough for tonite, and on a final note, check out my pimp semi-urban run:
After months of dealing with a phone that worked on its own schedule - effing treo - and June's phone breaking I took the plunge into life with a digital leash. As of Sunday evening I am officially the owner of an iPhone so I'm connected to that thing called the Internet at all times. It was a difficult decision to purchase the phone because for months I have been dogging owners of the device. I was almost certain I would catch some shit for my previous attitude towards having the Internet on my phone.
Anyways, the phone is just a segueway into my post. After putting down the squares in March 2008, to no surprise, I put on quite a bit of weight and became really lazy. Apparently quitting smoking isn't all it's cracked up to be. To curtail this onset of laziness and general ill-feeling I decided to hit the treadmill and see what I could do. After several weeks I started seeing some great progress and finally got within a normal BMI. Then, one night of clang-clang-clang and thinking I could handle the squares only when I had a few cold ones, I fell off the wagon. With that came less running and the second round of laziness. The first time I put the squares down I used Chantix, but that is not an option now because I am a student pilot and there is a strict ban on the drug, something about seizures or some nonsense like that. So this time I must do it on my own. Getting back in to my running groove has helped, and I've used some of my running goals to assist me with that.
This time around with the running, given the change in seasons and just up for a new challenge in general, I have decided to hit the road. I couldn't live in a worse neighborhood terrain-wise for running as it is composed of multiple hills and makes for a very rough 1.8 miles. For the last three weeks I have been running the neighborhood and haven't seen much improvement. I can complete the 1.8 miles just fine, but at the end I am beat, so today I decided to change things up a little bit and venture out of my neighborhood. This is where the iPhone comes in. With the iPhone AppStore comes a sweet app called iMapMyRun which posts your runs and maps them to http://www.mapmyrun.com. This is particularly helpful because other than painfully mapping my runs on google maps and guessing, which I do not like to do, I had no clue how fast, how far, etc. Today I completed a 2.47 mile run in 23 minutes and some change which was very encouraging. The best part about the run is that I could have probably gone further. So after the run I sent the link of to James, Brad and crew and went to the sage of running himself James for some much needed advice on what I needed to do goal wise to continue. James provided some advice on running based on time and throw everything else out the window. So tomorrow 25 minutes here I come!
That's enough for tonite, and on a final note, check out my pimp semi-urban run:
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