Same Time, Same Channel

Itty bitty progression run.

6:41 am, 43° F, 64% humidity, winds calm, very light rain, just enough to make the road damp and make my glasses spotty.

I drove to seminary this morning and then ran after that. That doesn't leave me much time for running, but I'm not up for much distance these days anyway. I started out really slowly but then got going a little better, so I decided to push it just a little bit and make it a little progression run.

There was a really horrible smell, like vomit, as I went around one corner of a busy intersection where there are a lot of retail businesses. After I got around the corner I saw two guys with a big tanker truck and a big tube going into the ground behind a restaurant. I'm guessing that that was the source of the smell. I was glad when I got past it.

AP: 9:46. Splits: 10:27, 9:45, 9:23, 0.41 @ 9:05.

Easy run.

6:42 am, 39° F, 50% humidity, wind 5 S.

Monday and Tuesday. How about that? I haven't done that in a while.

 I slept in a little this morning because my boys have no school today because the middle school and high school are polling places. But I still have to get the girl to school and get myself to work, so I better get crackin' now.

It was a little cooler this morning and I actually felt kind of cold when I was going into the wind, but was quite toasty when the wind was behind me.

AP: 9:45. Splits: 10:12, 9:45, 9:26, 9:36.

Easy run.

6:07 am, 46° F, 33% humidity, wind 5 S.

I probably would have skipped running today if I hadn't been meeting Lindsay. I went up to Greeley last night for an orchestra concert that my son played in and I didn't get home until midnight. But maybe I can take a nap today since I'm taking the day off from work. The elementary schools are off today to compensate for the middle and high schools being off on Tuesday, so I've just got my little one home today with the big boys gone.

I cut the run a little short and split off and came home instead of running all the way back to Lindsay's house before running home. That cut about a mile and half off of what I would have run otherwise. But I'm tired this morning.

AP: 9:44. Splits: 9:35, 9:38, 9:51, 9:46, 0.65 @ 9:51.

Nearly a progression run.

9:00 am, 52-57° F, 29% humidity, wind 4 S.

I really slept in today and then got up and went to the Highline Canal Trail and ran all by myself. I went to the trail because I'm kind of tired of pounding the pavement around my neighborhood.

I've been running in long pants lately because the mornings are getting cooler, but I wore shorts today and I'm not very used to that. My increasingly thunderous thighs got a little too friendly and are now both red and screaming.

I didn't really keep a close I on my pace, I just tried to get a little faster as the run progressed, and I really tried to push it the last .35. So I'm calling that last .35 fast miles. I was planning to run 6 miles but then decided to run for an hour instead. I turned around after 30 minutes, but went a ways beyond where I started on the return trip.

AP: 9:27. Splits: 9:48, 9:38, 9:29, 9:21, 9:28, 9:17, 0.35 @ 8:31.

Moderate run,

6:55 am, 50° F, 29% humidity, wind 5 S.

I woke up naturally at about 5:00 this morning and I should have gotten up and run then, but I stayed in bed and went back to sleep. I finally got up and got dressed to run an hour later, but then I got sucked into the kids' needs vortex. When I finally made it out the door I was really pressed for time, so I did a short run and pushed the pace the whole way.

I had to stop at one point to tie my shoe lace. I paused my watch and realized about a1/10 of  a mile after I started running again that I hadn't. So my stats are a little off. I estimated up the distance by 1/10, but the paces are based on the shorter distance.

AP: 9:03. Splits: 9:43, 8:58, 0.81 @ 8:18.

P.S. I saw Barbie out walking.

Easy run with unpremeditated progression.

5:35 am, 45° F, 38% humidity, wind 6 SW.

I thought I'd take advantage of the recent "fall back" and try to make the switch to early morning running.

I smelled the bacon cooking at IHOP and the coffee from Starbucks. I expected the donuts from Lamar's, but I must not have been there at the right time.

AP: 9:34. Splits: 10:02, 9:43, 9:24, 9:05.

Easy run with slight progression.

5:37 am, 30° F, 85% humidity, winds calm, light mist.

This was a relatively pleasant run.

After the run I rode to seminary. That is to say, Thing 2 was the driver and I was the passenger giving instructions. This was his second time driving (the first was yesterday) and the first time to go out of the neighborhood. But he didn't have to spend much time on the busy streets.

It struck me yesterday how when my kids were little I had to potty train each one in succession, and now that they're old, it appears that I need to teach each one to drive in succession. I actually sent Thing 2 to a $500 drivers ed class, and they will take him driving, but I need to get him comfortable with the car first and I have to drive with him for 50 hours, besides the driving he does with the instructor, in order for him to get his license. On the whole, I would say that potty training is more frustrating. But the stakes are little higher with driving, particularly in terms of the cost of accidents.

AP: 9:40. Splits: 9:53, 9:44, 9:38, 9:23.

Easy run.

6:06 am,  23°F, 80% humidity, winds calm.

We were having such a lovely warm autumn, and then all of a sudden it got cold.

But hey, I made it out four days this week already and it's just Friday. Maybe I'll get out tomorrow at make it five for the week. At least I've got two weeks in a row of 4 days/week. That's better than I've done in a long time. I figure if I can get back to being consistent, then I'll start increasing mileage. Right now I'm content with keeping it short if that's what it takes to get me out the door.

Oh, and I ran with Lindsay today. Because it's Friday.

And Thing 3 ran three miles on his own yesterday afternoon. But now his knee is hurting him, so I don't know what to make of that.

AP: 9:29. Splits: 9:38, 9:23, 9:37, 9:26, 0.5 @ 9:16.

Just a short run.

5:44 am, 29° F, 66% humidity, winds calm.

I smelled donuts this time.

AP: 9:23. Splits: 9:41, 9:31, 9:04, 0.25 @ 8:49.

P.S. It's snowing now. I guess the upside of getting out early to run is that I got out before the snow came.

Another little bitty run.

5:50 am, 26° F, 71% humidity, winds calm.

This was just like Monday's run except a few minutes later, a few seconds slower, and a few degrees colder. It's mildly interesting that each of my mile splits today was just a few seconds slower than on Monday, but the last 0.25 was exactly the same as on Monday.

One of these days I'm going to get up early enough to go for a little bit longer run in the morning.

AP: 9:29. Splits: 9:50, 9:37, 9:09, 0.25 @ 8:49.

The same little bitty run once again, but a little faster this time.

5:45 am, 41° F, 34% humidity, wind 8 S.

I seem to have only a half hour to run lately, so I'm fitting in what I can during that time.

After the run, I took Thing 2 to seminary and he drove. Then I made lunches for today. Now I have to do some ironing. Then I have to get ready for work. Oh the joys of mornings.

AP: 9:12. Splits: 9:47, 9:23, 8:38, 0.25 @ 8:28.

A not-so-easy and not-so short (but definitely not long) run.

6:07 am, 50° F, 20% humidity, winds 5 S.

I pushed the pace just a little bit for this whole run. Maybe it's because I started faster than usual, but I was really sucking wind on that fifth mile. It didn't help that that mile is a somewhat more than gradual uphill the whole way.Or maybe I'm just out of shape.

It's Friday, so I ran with Lindsay, It's a good thing or I probably would have run that easy 3.25 that I've been doing all week again.

I'm taking my kids to see Harry Potter this afternoon.

AP: 9:19. Splits: 9:17, 9:09, 9:30, 9:12, 9:33, 0.8 @ 9:10.

An I-Sure-Can't-Do-What-I-Used-to-Do Run.

7:54 am, 26-30° F, 81% humidity, winds calm.

When I check wunderground.com when I was getting dressed to run, it said 25.5°F with Freezing Fog. I looked out the window and saw Freezing Fog and got scared and dressed warmly as a result. Too warmly, as it turned out. During the course of my run the fog lifted and the temperature rose to 30°, which is not particularly warm, but too warm to run in what I was wearing.

Not only was I overdressed, my run started out strangely. I was taking a route that I used to take all the time but haven't run in a while. About a mile into the run I came out of some reverie I was in and thought I had missed my turn, so I turned into a neighborhood thinking I could find a way to cut through to the street I should have turned on. This neighborhood was unfamiliar to me. I went left when I got in the neighborhood and that turned out to be a dead end, so I turned around and went the direction that was right from the entrance to the neighborhood. That was a dead end do. That neighborhood does not go anywhere. So I went back to the main road I had been on and went back the way I had come, thinking that I would go back to the turn, but then after a few minutes I realized that I had been wrong in the first place and I hadn't missed the turn at all. In fact, I had a good ways to go still to get to the turn. So I made another u-turn and then I was back on course.

This course has a lovely 1.5 mile uphill stretch in the middle of it and I seriously considered stopping and walking during this section, but I just tried to keep going. I had some downhill after that, but the last 1/4 of mile home is quite steep uphill. I struggled so much to finish this run that when I got home, I stopped in my driveway, and had dry heaves and then got down on my hands and knees and heaved some more.

So I really can't do what I used to do. The extra 20 lbs. I'm carrying is undoubtedly a problem. And I've clearly lost a lot of fitness. It doesn't help that this was my fourth consecutive day of running, which I haven't done in a long while, and I had a pretty tough run yesterday. Okay. Those are my excuses. I've got some hard work ahead of me if I'm going to get back to where I was before.

AP: 9:29. Splits: 9:40, 9:30, 9:35, 9:10, 9:26, 0.71 @ 9:34.

Easy run.

5:37 am, 27° F, 60% humidity, winds calm.

I only hit the snooze button twice this morning instead of the three times I did most days last week, so I was able to run a little bit longer than I did those days last week. I started out slower than I have been, and that made it easier overall.

It's the typical busy morning.

AP: 9:46. Splits: 10:11, 9:53, 9:36, 9:27.

We're here in Utah for Thanksgiving and two of my sons (Jacob, who is 18, and Sam, who is 13) agreed to run a 5K with me. We found this one in Draper and decided to do it.

We knew it would be cold, and it really turned out to be pretty darn cold. The temperature while we were running went from 7.5° F all the way up to a blistering 9.5°F.

I got the boys warm clothes to run in, but we hadn't brought any kind of face covering, so we stopped at Walmart on the way to the race and bought scarfs and better hat for Sam.

Fortunately, the area where we waited for the start of the race was inside a mall. Because of that and because I was running with my boys, I didn't run any kind of warm up and I made no attempt to line up in a good spot. You had to pay extra to get a timing chip in this race, and I didn't do that. Besides all that, I am not in nearly as good of shape as I was a year ago, so I didn't run a terrifically fast race.

There was a wave start and I think we made it across the start line a good 10 minutes after the official start of the race, so I'm reporting my time according to my Garmin.

We all started out together. The boys got a little ahead of me at first because they shot through a gap that then closed up and blocked me off, but I caught them a little while later. But then at about 3/4 mile into the race, Thing 3 and I looked around and realized we had lost Jacob. About a half mile after that, we were approaching a turn and Sam informed me that he was going to walk a bit at the turn and I should go on ahead, so I kept running and ran the rest of the race by myself.

The race was relatively flat, flatter than what I usually run in Colorado.

After I finished, I waited just outside the finish chute. Sam showed up about 3 minutes later, then he and I waited together, and then Jacob finally showed up about 7 minutes after that. We got some fruit and then headed back to Grandma's house.

It was fun doing this race with my boys, even though we didn't run the whole way together. It was a fairly big race. There were over 3,000 runners. We one couple where the woman was dressed up as a turkey and the man was dressed up as a pilgrim. I saw another woman dressed up as a pilgrim. Mostly it was just people trying to stay warm, though I did see 2 or 3 people in shorts.

So here are my splits: 9:35, 8:34, 8:23, 0.1 @ 8:37.

I didn't dare sprint to the finish because the last bit was in the parking lot of the mall and it was kind of icy.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

Easy run at sea level.

5:44 am, 39°F, 81% humidity, winds calm.

I'm in Foster City, California for work once again. So I ran my regular route that I run when I'm here. I've noticed before when I've been here that other runners don't seem to greet each other. So I made a point of saying good morning to every runner that I saw. Four out of six responded after I made the initial contact. I'm sure they wouldn't have said anything or made any acknowledgement if I hadn't said anything.

AP: 9:04. Splits: 9:18, 9:05, 8:58, 8:59, 8:58, 0.12 @ 9:01.