I wasn’t sure I would get to run at all today. We woke up to more snow, and it was supposed to be snowing all day and most of the next few days. Someone needs to tell the weatherman that the term April Showers means rain, not snow.

The freezing temperatures and amazing wind speeds (I’m guessing the gusts were much faster than the 30mph predicted) made for some interesting moments on the run. It’s garbage day today, and I had the opportunity to dodge several flying garbage cans. I also got nearly blown to the ground by the wind on one occasion, and lost my right shoe on another. To make things more fun, I couldn’t get my shoe back on without untying it first. It was quite comical. Luckily I knew how to pause RunKeeper so my stats didn’t get too messed up.

The wind was coming from the northwest, which meant every single hill climb was directly into the wind. By the time I got to the last big hill on Ironwood, I couldn’t do it. It seemed running into that wind may actually be slower than walking, so I walked up to Sandalwood. I jogged the rest of the way home and was quite pleased to see both my garbage can and my fence were still standing.

31:13

I guess my time isn’t as bad as it seemed, but I really need to get to the point where I never go over 30 minutes.

What a difference a little sleep and some breakfast can make. Charmaine came back from San Diego and made pizza. That’s much better food than I had eaten the whole week she was gone. Then we went to bed at a decent hour. Unsurprisingly, I was feeling pretty good this morning. I had a small protein shake about an hour before running. I think all those things really helped.

I started off pretty strong. I cruised up the hill past the church without much problem. When RunKeeper announced that I was 20 seconds ahead of pace at the 5 minute mark, I wondered if my GPS was acting up. No, I was actually doing pretty well. I figured that out when I was still ahead of pace at the 10 minute, 15 minute, and even 20 minute marks.

I still had a bit of a tough time going up the big hill and the sustained 1/2 mile climb through the first half of mile 3, but I didn’t “die” this time, and I was able to get back into some sort of rhythm along the top of Sandalwood. I was happy about that. I think I still need to work on coming up that hill faster and bringing it all home faster, but I’m starting to wonder if that means I need to add some more distance to my runs. I know I need to add distance eventually (the run at the end of the Spudman is 10k, for example). I’m just nervous about adding more, but I think it’s probably time. Maybe I just need to run more days per week. I’ll figure something out.

28:55 (finally a personal best)

It started raining/slushing again right after I finished running. I was feeling pretty good after the run and thinking of taking another short bike ride, but the weather refuses to accept that winter is over.

Over the past few months I have been on a calorie restricted diet. I haven’t been doing anything crazy. I’m not using any fad diet or chemicals to lose weight. I have just been tracking my daily calorie intake using The Daily Plate from Live Strong. It’s been great for losing a few extra pounds here and there, but recently I’ve been wondering if the calorie restriction is negatively impacting my performance.

Charmaine is out of town this week. That usually means I don’t sleep well. I didn’t sleep well last night. When you combine a lack of calories with a lack of sleep, you really shouldn’t expect stellar performance. I certainly didn’t perform anywhere near stellar today.

It’s been extremely cold and wet lately. The weatherman even predicted rain and snow AGAIN today. I put on a long-sleeved shirt and a big hat to go out running. It was still pretty cold, but the factor I hadn’t thought too much about was the wind. It was really strong today. I was running into a headwind almost the whole first mile. That was a bad mile for me. RunKeeper kept telling me I was almost a minute behind pace. I didn’t make up much time on mile 2, and mile 3 was just terrible. But at least I finished. I’m sick of saying that, but I don’t have anything else good to say, so I have to stick with that… for now.

31:31

That’s my worst run since March 18th (4 weeks ago). It’s time to take it up a notch.

I ran with Murphy today. He was there from the moment I decided I was really going to venture out into the icy cold rain and howling wind. He made sure I followed his law.

My iPhone GPS was acting up again. I did my best to get it to come to an understanding of where I really was, but if you look at the map on RunKeeper, you’ll see that it got very lost along the way. I’m not really sure how it can get so confused so often. I’m hoping it has something to do with interference from the rain, but I’m not very impressed with it to say the least.

My drawstring broke. My shorts dropped. I fell to the ground. My phone buzzed with text message after text message until I thought someone was desperately trying to get in touch with me. I accidentally paused RunKeeper for a few seconds trying to figure out who was texting me so much. It turned out to be text spam. I hate text spam. I did figure out how to resume RunKeeper, but it wasn’t pretty.

30:13

When I used to complain about the weather in high school, my swim coach would say something like, “It’s sunny somewhere else right now, where your competition is training. You may choose not to train today, but when you meet him, he will beat you.” That’s why I decided to run today, and that’s why I kept deciding to keep running each time I wanted to call it quits today.

The weather was really nice Monday evening, so Charmaine and I took our bikes out for a little spin. We did our short route, which takes us up into Alpine, over to the road that goes up to Suncrest, and then back home. It’s only 16 miles with very little climbing, but it’s really fun. I always ride with my phone, so I decided to try RunKeeper on the ride. I don’t listen to music while I ride, and I didn’t want the phone telling me I was on or off pace every five minutes, so I disabled the audio cues. Charmaine has a Garmin 705, but I just have a simple bike computer, so I thought it would be cool to have additional data. It was cool. I’ll definitely do that again.

Today I got all excited, thinking I was somehow way ahead of my pace when I made it all the way to the park at the center of The Cedars without hearing the voice tell me how far ahead or behind I was. Soon it was obvious that I had no idea if I was on pace or not. The further I got from where I normally hear the audio cue, the more I wondered what was wrong. Eventually I remembered that I had disabled the audio cues for biking. I wish I could set it differently for different sports. Knowing that I had no idea if I was ahead or behind was a little discouraging. I remembered thinking how much time I cut off the first time I used RunKeeper with the audio cues. I figured I better just push myself hard and see what happens.

I knew I wanted to improve my pace going up the big hill right after the 2 mile mark, so I focused on that. I think I did alright, but I was still dead by the time I hit the top. I pushed myself through mile 3, but I was obviously off my pace by quite a bit. I finished the activity and wrote some notes on my phone before I had any clue how I had done. I actually thought I had done much better than I had, which you can tell from my notes.

30:25

I guess those audio cues make a bigger difference than I thought. I’m turning them back on right now.

I didn’t run last Friday. It was snowing, the wind was howling, and it was really cold outside. Plus, I thought I may wind up going skiing again on Saturday, so it was easy to justify not heading out into the blizzard. I had no convenient excuses today. The sun was out, the snow was gone, the wind was calm, and I didn’t end up skiing, so my legs were fresh. It was the perfect day to be outside.

I started out great. I felt good going up the hill by the church and all the way through The Cedars. I hit the 2 mile mark at 18:42, but then I died on the big hill into the last mile. I need to figure out how to get my butt up that hill a little faster. I spend way too much time there. I also need to figure out how to have some energy left to bring it home after I get up that hill. I did manage to finish the last mile at a respectable pace, but I know I can do better.

29:44

I think I could have done a fourth mile today, but only if it was completely flat, or slightly downhill. Maybe it really is time to start thinking up a longer route.

Last night Charmaine and I rode our trainers for an hour. I took it somewhat easy, knowing that I had to run today. I felt pretty good afterwards and good again this morning. I’m still not sure if that played into my terrible performance today, but I don’t have a lot of other excuses, so that’s what I’m going with.

Wanting to avoid another confusing map in RunKeeper, I decided to make sure my iPhone believed I was starting from the right spot. Nope. It thought I was about a half mile away again. I had to fight with it for about ten minutes to convince it I was here and not there before starting my run. Maybe that played into my difficulty?

Excuses aside, I felt pretty good starting out, but by the time I hit the first corner I realized that my cadence was too high and my stride was too short. In other words, I was just spinning my wheels and not really going anywhere. I tried to step it up a bit going up the first hill, but my suspicions were confirmed at the 5 minute mark when RunKeeper announced, “You are behind your target pace by 14 seconds.” That wasn’t nearly as motivating as finding out I was ahead of my target pace. I tried to push it after that, and I did get ahead of my target pace for a bit, but that last mile just took me apart. Still, I’m happy to have finished with a decent time.

30:09

Maybe I’m not quite ready to add that 4th mile.