In spin class yesterday we simulated Sierra and Paterson (both of which the Amgen tour climbed the day before.)

Unfortunately I haven’t done much hill climbing in Santa Clara yet (I want to blame Amy’s desire to avoid hills on rides, but the real issue is we just haven’t ridden that much.)

The hills were fun for the class, but now I really want to get out on the bike and try them for real.

Stupid Rain

Sunday:
Sunday I like to run with the Sunnyvale Sports Basement group. There are a few pretty fast runners which help push me on my long runs and more importantly they keep the runs much much more interesting. This Sunday it was pouring rain and I feared that no one would show up. Thankfully there were a few people there including Mamaan (I apologize if that is not how you spell it.) Mamaan was nice/stupid enough to climb under the freeway with me — THATS RIGHT — we climbed under the freeway. In explanation the group usually runs on San Tomas Aquino Creek Trail, however thanks to the rain the trail was flooded in places including the only way to get across 101. Considering we were only 2 miles into a 10 mile run, I stubbornly refused to let the be a deterrent and instead Mamaan and I scaled the slope next to the flooded trail and went hand over hand along a pipe for over 40 feet so we could get to the other side of the freeway and keep running.
Other then that the run was relatively uneventful and the rain was for the most part sympathetic as it sprinkled rather than poured.

Monday:
Did 6.5 on the treadmill. Worked on increasing the incline so that I will be prepared for the Presidio 10.
I use to be a great hill runner. I group up in San Francisco (yes in the actual city — yes people do that.) As a result all of my runs included some sort of hill of sorts. In particular one of my favorite runs with the Fleet Feet group involved running up to the base of Coit Tower and then down Crooked Street. Suffice it to say that all the hill training built a lot of quality leg strength. This trend continued in college at Berkeley where the campus abutted Strawberry Canyon and the only trail run you could access without a car involved a large hill climb (someday I will look up what the elevation change is.) Anyways now I live in Santa Clara. The closest things to a hill running distance from my house are freeway overpasses. As a result I have decided that the treadmill will be necessary to work on hill strength (at least until I find some local trail runs in the hills.)
As boring as it was it felt good to know that I could still run at 3.5% incline at 6:30 pace without too much effort. I will be building this up over the next few weeks so that I can easily run the first two miles of the Presidio 10 (which are all uphill) without too much pain.

Tuesday:
Did a nice light base run 6:25 pace 7 miles. Sadly not much more to say about that.

So Amy and I slept through our alarms this morning, but it was no big deal because it is Friday! I went for a 4.5 miler by myself and then took Sally for our usual two mile puppy sprint.

The 4.5 miler went really really well. I wore my Nike Free shoes and just tried to make sure I was running with a smooth stride. Ended up running 6:07 pace while feeling like I was just out for a light run. It was definitely a moral boost.

Sally did well on her 2 miler too, so I will be upping her mileage tomorrow.

Best of all even though it is supposed to rain for the next 9 days it was sunny during our runs!

This morning I ran my first interval workout in a long long time. To be honest I was a little afraid that I wouldn’t be able to keep the pace I had set for myself. It’s still too early in my come back to the sport of running for me to mentally deal with failure. Enough about my insecurities, the workout called for 4×800m at 5k pace with 400m active recovery.

I managed to run 5:15 pace for the intervals and 7:30 pace for the recovery. As usual with intervals the first one felt great, the second one was a little worrying, the third one was a bit of a struggle, and by the fourth the fact that it was almost over was enough to allow me to hang on.

I managed to take on an additional 5 miles with my warmup, cooldown, and run with Sally.

So, the lack of sleep the other night caught up to me this morning and it was super painful getting out of bed. Thankfully 4 alarms and a pre-6 a.m. phone call were enough to get us out of bed.

Wednesday, despite the fact that I have no class and more free time is my light day. (Yes I know this makes no sense, no I don’t know why I am doing it.) As a light day it is usually a cross training day and no weight lifting. Today we went one for two.

Spinning class with Cathy N from 6:20-7:05 has been our routine for the last few months and I am super glad we made it today. Cathy had us doing a crit (criterium) simulation which involved three laps around a course with rolling hills. We did two crits which was a great workout and the class flew by.

Afterwards, Amy wanted to do her weight lifting routine because she hadn’t been able to lift at the gym the last few days (don’t worry she has been working out just not at the gym.) So I did my lower body lifting session which I usually do on Tuesdays but didn’t have time for yesterday. I didn’t have much energy, but managed to get it done.

To top it all off Sally and I went for a 2 miler so that she wouldn’t be driving us crazy all day.

What a wonderful LIGHT day

Tonight I showed up at the gym after 8pm! I had a late night last night working on a law school memo, so I was unable to wake up early and get to the gym this morning. To make matters even more fun, I have class from 1-7:15pm on Tuesdays. Thankfully I wasn’t totally dragging and made it to the gym even though I hadn’t eaten dinner.

The run itself was fine; a boring 6 mile run on the treadmill. I watched the Warriors-Knicks game to keep my mind occupied. Felt pretty fresh at the end and threw in a 5:52 mile.

For good measure I did a set of core exercises before and after my run.

So we have been trying to wake up early and go to the gym in the mornings. This morning was not one of our best. Amy had a 7am call so we needed to leave the house by 5:30. That didn’t happen as we both were tired. In the end, Amy got up for her call at 7 and I went to the gym around 7:30.

I did my usual Monday workout: I lifted for 45 minutes or so, and then did 6 miles on the treadmill. I tried to through a little incline into the run for once (I have been really good at avoiding it the last 7 weeks.) It is really hard to get in much hill work as we live in a valley which makes any run from our apartment flat. Anyways, since I am planning on doing the Presidio 10 (which has a 400+ ft climb for the first two miles) I have decided I need to start training on some hills. Since it was my first day I took it pretty easy on the incline, pressing the incline up button randomly over about a mile and a half section of my run. In the end my incline was around 1% and I had only climbed 46 feet (woops.) I am going to have to do more than that later this week.

Overall the run was good, I ran the last mile right about 6 flat pace for a total time of 38:55. After a few weeks of feeling really sluggish on the treadmill I am starting to feel fresh again. As always stats can be seen at buckeyoutdoors.com

So updates to the zero people who read this blog (at least I hope nobody was reading this, it’s embarrassing):
First, I am sorry that this blog is SOOOO UGLY. I will fix that sometime in the next few weeks. (Hopefully sooner, but super busy with school and working out.)

Second, Amy and I have been working out. A lot in fact. So perhaps it is time that we start blogging about it. Last go round we hadn’t been working out much before we started blogging (I hadn’t been doing anything at all.) Right now we have been working out very regularly since middle of December.

Third, we recently made running plans for the first time since this blog fell apart. Amy and I will be running the Presidio 10. I will be doing the 10 mile race and Amy will be doing the 10k.
We made Amy a training plan last night (we only have 7 weeks till the race.) It is based off one of the 10k plans in Matt Fitzgerald’s Brain Training for Runners(No it is not some crazy positive thinking book.)
I will be doing the 10 mile as a pre-season fitness test. My running plans at the moment are to increase mileage until March 15th and then start following the level 3 marathon training plan in Fitzgerald’s book (adapted based on my own wonderful knowledge from years of being coached.) So hopefully I will be doing a marathon in September or October.

Thats all the details I have time to post at the moment, but hopefully you will be hearing from me (and Amy) more soon.

Wow, I’ve been seriously remiss in posting.

But at least I’ve been running! It’s been hard because work is crazy busy right now – I’m working more than 15 hour days – but I think that running is the only thing that keeps my nervous energy somewhat in check and keeps me somewhat sane.

I went for a run this morning with Beth in Denver. My stomach was hurting before we went so we had to walk some – I was getting sharp pain at the top this time. Here’s what we did:

Distance: About 4 mi
Time: 46:00

Slow but not so bad considering

So it started out well. Meaning I actually got up and run today. But then I realized that I had mapped out a 1.5 mile out and back instead of 2…oops. I pushed myself a little further to where I thought might be 2 and then turned around.

All was going well – it was a beautiful morning, perfect running weather. But then I got a deep cramp in my lower abdomen and could barely walk let alone run. Eeek. I walked about 3/4 mile, but still ended up with an OK time – right on the brink of recovery. Oh, and I was also short as today was supposed to be 4 miles. Here’s my summary: