update

One month left!!!

training is going pretty good. as good as i could hope for. i have a 16, 20, and 24 mile long run lrft which gives me a two week taper. I have been hitting most of my runs and gym sessions. Not all. i admit I could be doing better but things get in the way and such. Excuses i guess. Trails are getting easier and are pretty enjoyable. This weekend will be the big test because im going to run to the summit where the race takes place. if anything it will be a confidence boost if i can pull this off without sucking.

almost

Half mile short of my scheduled miles. 28.5 of the 29. no big deal. I feel pretty good so far. Yesterdays 12 miler felt easy and i never really got tired. my legs were a little tight once i stopped but that is pretty standard. i got in the pool once and did sprints with fins. no time for the gym but hit all the runs. im happy with that. i have 31 miles on schedule for this week. I hope to get them all in. it just takes some planning. 31 miles sounds so little for what im training for and it almost scares me. i might have to bump up the miles even more than what i have planned. i top out at 45 miles. i think i need more with more trail runs. with this being my first 50k its all about learning. so i just hope for the best, although im confident i will finish.

Noble Canyon 50k

So i registered for Noble Canyon 50k (www.noblecanyon50k.com) race and its on September 25th 2010. 33 miles with 10 thousand feet of climbing. I have never ran more than 27 miles at once so its something i have never done. I have been wanting to do an ultra for years now and finally just went for it and signed up. I have a history of injuries when I bump up my miles so i have a different plan this time.

I dont know if this is going to work but im doing this race no matter what. Im going to get 3-4 good runs per week in concentrating on my long run. Im going to do two gym sessions a week for strength training. Focusing on legs and core. A few rides a week on my road bike and a few pool sessions.

Overall i want to have better overall fitness. I think it will keep me injury free and be more fun. This race WILL happen and i will post all of my work outs from here on out until I toe the line September 25th to keep me in check. Here is a profile for what i have got myself into.

8 weeks left

Running with the Devil is 8 weeks out. im a little more than half way through my training plan. the first half went suprisingly well. However, the last few weeks my shins have been acting up again. i built up to 33.3 miles last week. this week was supposed to be 37. i skipped out of two runs this week in order to rest my shins. tomorrow is 16 miles. im going to do it and hope for the best. it is frustrating to have this happen right when you feel like you are getting in the best shape ever. last week i did a 14 mile LR and it was easy, i never got tired and had no soreness other than achy shins.

Almost Home!!

One week left. I cant wait to get back to San Diego. 12 weeks left until Running with the devil. so far so good. when i first got on the ship it was hard to run only two miles on the treadmill because of the heat and humidity. I got used to it though and it made me stronger. i built my long runs up to 9 miles and was hitting around 20-25 miles a week on it. it sucked but was good training for the heat. I know its not going to be anything like the real thing when its 115 degrees out but its a start. my legs are holding up well and not hurting too bad and im recovering fairly quickly.

I have 30 miles planned this week, which i have never hit before. I have always injured myself before i reached this point. When i looked back at my old training logs I was shocked that i never kept any kind of consistancy or volume. I dont know how the hell i ran a marathon with that low of miles. I also want to do a half marathon sometime at the end of May and see what time i can pull off. I really want to break 1:45 but would be happy with sub 1:50.

new plan

Running with the Devil marathon in June. Silverman Iron distance TRI in November. I cant wait!!! I have been wanting to do an ironman for years now. I turn 30 this year and I want to challenge myself. I am building my miles on a treadmill that is possibly the worst treadmill known to man for many reasons. 1) when you open the door you are smacked in the face with funk, really really bad funk. 2) Its on a ship which rocks all over the place and you have to hold on to something. 3) It's in a small room with NO ventilation and high humidity so a quarter mile into the run you already start sweating and by mile 2 it looks like you jumped in a pool. No joke. The farthest I have run on it was 5 miles. The toughest 5 miles i have ever run. With the Running with the Devil marathon coming up I think it will help, not only physically but mentally. I have a feeling most of the marathon is going to be a HUGE mental challenge with no where to go to escape the heat. After that marathon I am going to start building up my bike miles and put in a lot more time in the pool to start ramping up for Silverman. I cant wait to get back! I miss my family and SD. For the most part, other Countries suck ass. Although tongue and cheek are pretty tasty.

leaving for deployment

Since im going to be on a ship for 5 months ill my running will be on a treadmill. I want to get into marathon shape out there and run a marathon on the treadmill at the end of my deployment. Sounds really boring but there is NOTHING else to do out there. There is a few races that I want to do next year. San Diego Rock and Roll, Running with the devil (in vegas), ET 51k, and my big race is Silverman (Iron man out by lake mead)in NOV 2010. All the races I wanted to do this year went out the window when we had to start training for our deployment. Ill be back in April, just in time to start ramping up for SD RNR.

In San Diego now

Im finally in San Diego and im starting to get back into shape again after about 3 weeks of not running. Traveling across country in a car and the move in general made it hard to have time to run. I have found a flat course around my house which is the only flat area aound here. Away from that there are some very steep and long hills and they are everywhere.

I just started my training program for my upcoming half in June. its called running with the devil. The race takes place at lake mead in Vegas in the middle of summer and the middle of the day. OUCH!! I know its going to suck but I also know that I can run 13.1 miles, but I don't know if I can run 13.1 miles in 120 degree heat. That's why I'm doing it. I want to see what happens. I don't have a time goal nor will I, I just want to finish.

This race I'm also going to use as a build up race for the ET 51k in August. The farthest I have ran before was 27 miles. 27 because my last marathon i parked a mile away from the start and after getting out of the car was informed the race began 15 min ago so we took off booking from there. the start was a ghost town and it took about 3 miles into the course to catch up. o well, shitty way to start a marathon, my plans for starting slow was shot. So, as I was saying the 51k is a midnight ultra marathon out in the middle of area 51.

I'm back to running again. I needed that break last week to recover from the race. I got in a 20 mile ride, one short run, and 20 minutes on the elliptical. I got in an easy 3 mile run tonight and averaged about 179ish HR. It felt super easy.

I had some plans to run about 20-25 miles per week which included one long run on the weekend of about 8-10 miles and some 5-6 mile runs during the week. I think I am going to try to run more often with a little bit shorter runs for a few weeks and see how that goes. I am also going to try to get out this week 3 times on my road bike. I want to build up on my bike miles to where I can ride up to 40-50 miles at one time.

I ran 3.75 miles of the 5 I had planned. My race wore me out more than I thought. My legs were sore as hell and I wanted to run it off but it seemed to get worse. well see how the rest of the week turns out. I am going to ride my bike in the morning/afternoon time and then hit the gym, I mean get my swole on.

First race of the year!!!

I did the Jacksonville beach winter run. There were two options, 5 or 10 miles. I did the 10 miler and everything went pretty good except my Ipod was dead and my garmin only worked for half the race. Its a good thing I prepped for this race huh? All and all it turned out to be a great race. I felt good from the start. My pace started off a bit fast at around an 8:20 pace so I slowed down to 8:45 and held that until my garmin went dead at mile 5ish. After that im not sure what my pace was, I was just trying to keep a steady pace. My goal for this race was 1 hr and 30 min. I ended up running 1:29:20. One thing I noticed was my legs never got tired of heavy. which is awsome but my breathing got pretty labered near the end which tells me my aerobic system is lacking.

Im not sure what my AVG HR was but for the first 5 miles it was around 194-196. Im pretty sure it only got higher from there. The last 2.5 miles I was starting to huff and puff but I kept pace with a couple that had said they were trying to get under 1:30 and it worked.

This week is going to be all easy runs. I am still in a base building phase and averaging about 20-25 miles p/week.

long time since last post

Well, to recap these past two months is not very hard. The marathon turned into a half marathon. I ended up running the Holiday half marthon on December 13th. I went into this run with very poor training and I learned alot from it. I was thinking I could go out and run 13.1 miles with very little training. Well, I was right I could do that but it was not pretty. My time was 2:12 averaging about a 10 min mile. I didnt wear my GPS and I was running on feel. I crossed mile 1 at 8:08, I thought i was going way slower than that. I ended up paying for it at mile 8 or so when my legs got heavy and I could not run with any speed at all. My last few miles were somewhere in the range of 11 min miles. Oh well, It was still fun.

The races I have in mind this year are as follows:

• June- Half marathon (running with the devil) should be nice and hot 110-120 degrees. I have no goal time I just want to finish and not die.
• August- ET Ultra marathon 51k: This one is interesting, it is ran at midnight out by area 51, hence, 51k not 50 k.
• December-Rock and roll Marathon in Vegas. ( tentative) because I might be out to sea.

Other goals I have this year is to get back in the gym on a regular basis. Ride my road bike more and get in the pool more often. basically I just want to be in all around good shape. with all the running Im going to be doing i need different forms of cross training to keep things fresh.

So far this month I have been running quite a bit. I have no schedule to follow so it is actually pretty nice. I just run what ever i feel like doing at the pace I feel like doing that day. I will come up with a plan eventually for that half marathon. I have a feeling its going to be done in the heat or lots of clothes to simulate heat. Well see, Like I said I hope to just survive. For now im just going to be building a good base to work from.

week 11 was a success

This week I completed all of my scheduled miles and it was relativley easy to do. 26 was the magic number. next week I have 29 miles with a 14 mile long run. I planned out all the rest of my long runs on the map from my logging site. Its crazy when you map out those 18-20 mile runs. It really puts it into perspective how far that actually is. I pretty much have to run around pensacola.

My fundraiser has been sitting at 225$ and my goal is 300$ I guess I need to get creative to raise the last 75 bucks. Any suggestions?

On a good note, My legs have been feeling great. I never would have thought I would be feeling this good this time last month. My motivation was super low and I was really bummed out. Every time I took off for a run my legs hurt so bad I could hardly run. Now, with my legs feeling good I have much more motivation and its looking more and more like I can handle an avg. pace of 10:00 min miles during the marathon.



Eric

Hit with the FLU

This week sucked. Tuesday I started feeling like shit and woke up Wednesday morning really feeling like crap. I had all the symptoms of a flu and it didn't go away until Saturday. Friday I managed to run 4 miles and felt pretty bad the rest of the day. Today I woke up and was going to do my scheduled 12 miler but changed my mind as I think I would benefit more from a 5 miler and just dish this week up as a bad week. For better terms Ill call it my cutback week. I'm going to "redo" my plan for last week this week. I will make it happen no matter what or how I feel. I cannot afford to keep missing these miles. I have about 8 weeks left until my marathon and the last 3 weeks are my taper weeks, as it stands now I might even taper for only 2 weeks.

Total miles this week: 8.8

Eric

Finally hit my scheduled miles

Looking back at the last few weeks I see that I have not ran nearly the miles that I hoped for. This month I am going to be a few miles shy of 60 miles. To put that into perspective, last month (the hottest month of the year) I ran 77 miles. Hopefully I can stick to what I have planned. October will be my biggest month ever with 111 miles. My legs are feeling much much better and even though it is depressing to see my lack of runs for September, I feel like it was worth it in the end. I needed those rest days.

Back to this past week...... here are my runs.

• Monday~ 5.5 miles
• Wednesday~5.2 miles (ran this one in the dark, my last mile was an 8:10. felt really good to speed up a bit)
• Saturday~ 4 miles ( started at an easy pace and progressed to about 9:20 pace)
• Sunday~ 9.75 Miles ( oops, supposed to be 10)

I didn't wear my HR monitor on any runs this week, but this coming week I will wear it and see if my HR at certain paces are lower than before. I feel like things are FINALLY starting to come around as my runs are becoming easier and less painful, I feel comfortable at somewhat faster paces. I am excited to see what October has to bring.

Total miles this week: 24.5
Total in training: 139.9

Eric

2 days late and a couple dollars short

.......Of miles that is. Umm yeah about that, I didnt quite get all my miles in last week. I woke up to late on Sunday for my long run which was suppose to be 10 miles. To make up for that I was going to run home yesterday from work which was about 10 miles but had to get picked up around the 5.5 mile mark to take Zach to the emergecy room for a bug bite. last week I was supposed to run 23 miles and ended up at 11.5. Pathetic. It has been so hard to hit all my scheduled runs in. Hopefully this week will pan out better.

Week 7

Running these last few weeks has more or less been a constant battle. I took two breaks about 4 days long to heal my leg pain. So far it has worked. My last 3 runs have been completly pain free even at the begining of my runs, which is a cause for celebration. Im not sure what was wrong with me or if it will come back but it is completly holding me back from doing any type of speed work. I feel like if i speed up the least little bit i wont be able to run the next day and It will induce my shin pain. A few weeks ago, I felt that a 4 hr marathon was not going to be possible unless this month had turned around for the better and was pain free. Well, that didnt happen, it got worse and I had to take extended breaks between runs, and when I did run it was super slow, like 11 to 11:30 paces. What all this lead to was a very slow torturous 7 mile run this morning where I had to take about 5 walk breaks and a huge blow to my 4 hour marathon asperations. Since this last month has not gone the way I had hoped I am probably going to throw a goal time out the window and just hope and pray I can stay pain free. As long as I can do this with out hurting myself I will enjoy the hell out of this marathon.

Baton Rouge does not seem like it took to big of a hit so Im sure it will still be a go ahead on December 6th. I missed one of my runs this week which was my mid week medium run of 4 miles (Im in my cutback week). This next week I have 26 miles planned if I get them all in. That is the hardest part about all of this is sticking to a strict schedule and being so damn busy. Pretty much what I have been doing is to have a plan for the week and just hope I have the time to get them in. Now I am starting to run longer on wednesday for my medium long runs (8-10) miles, so Im going to have to get creative. Any ideas?

Here is this weeks runs:

• Mon~3 miles
• Sat~3.4 Miles (Marine Corps 5k, Ran with 1200 marines.)
• Sun~6.9 Miles (1:19 min, felt dehydrated and took some walking breaks)

Total : 13.3 for the week (it was a cutback week)

Eric

break

This week I got one run in. Wednesday when I took off on my 6 mile run I had really bad pains in my lower legs, I kept going and figured it was the same as all my other runs and would go away. Well, it never did and i had to cut my run back and took the fastest way back and ended up being 4.5 miles. I havent ran since because I think it would benefit me more by taking the rest of the week off. In the morning I am going to try running again and see what happens. Im crossing my fingers. It really is frustrating to keep going through this.

This week I am going to start going to the gym. Maybe strenght training is what I am missing. I also want to start doing some cross fit workouts.

that is all for this week, I hope next week turns out better and I can get through this week without hurting. Good luck me.

Eric

week 5 of 18

This was the first week of my build week and i finally went over 20 miles. I have been trying to pick up the pace a bit but I am still not "feeling" it. I was hoping to be feeling alot lighter by now, which only happens now and then like at the end of my 5 mile run on Friday, I wanted to keep going because it felt so easy. Friday at 4:30 AM I ran with the marines again and we did 5 miles. there were somwhere around 1200 of them and we were all in a big formation. We averaged a 9:40 pace and it felt easy. maybe because it was not hot yet. Today I ran 10 miles at what is supposed to be an easy pace, and normally it would be easy but it was just so dang hot I was pushing to keep in the low 10 min pace. My average HR for my long run was 189 (zone 5). Normally when I am running that pace my HR is in the low 180's. The last 5 miles I stayed in the mid 190's. I am using cliff shot blocks during my long runs for anything at or over 10 miles. they really help, and they are tasty too.

Next week I have another build week meaning I am going to pick up the pace a little bit and mid week I have a 6 mile tempo run planned then 12 on Sat or Sun.

Today while running I realized that a 4 hr marathon was probably not going to be in my scope, However, I am not going to move away from that goal, That is still my "A" goal. I really want that time for some odd reason and I refuse to let that go, I think within the next month or so I will be able to know more about where I stand. It will also be alot cooler (50's) at the time of the race and all this running in the heat, alough discouraging, is really helping.

Also, I may have to not only change the date of my marathon but also change the marathon itself. I have been told that I will be going to west virginia on that weekend so I looked up other marathons for around that time. The closest one I could find is the Baton Rouge marathon in Louisiana on December 6th, That is if good ole Gustuv doesnt blow it off the planet. I guess Ill find out soon.

• Wed ~5.4 miles (10:16 pace, HR 183)
• Friday~ 5 miles (940 pace, no HR monitor)
• Sunday~ 10 miles (10:24 pace Avg, HR 189)

Total for training: 85.6 miles
Total this week: 20.4 miles

Eric

week 4 of 18

This week I did not complete my scheduled miles. I missed a 3 mile run on Friday. It has been a weird week with this tropical storm. I wasnt sure I was going to be able to make my long run today because the weather was supposed to be worse today as the backside of tropical storm Fay came through. But, I woke up to the sun with mild wind, It was perfect, so I headed out. Nothing interesting happend to me on my route today. Usually with that route somthing weird happens to me. mostly involving dogs. So far my training has been going ok, I was hoping to be feeling a bit faster by now and it hasnt happend yet. In the past it usually comes out of the blue and i feel light on my feet and fast. I am having a hard time with running my goal marathon pace. But I have also been running alot of them during the hottest part of the day.

I am officially done with my base phase and going into my build phase. I havent changed much besides two things. One, my miles are going to start getting longer and two, my mid week run, along with getting longer, I am going to start doing some tempos and marathon pace runs (9:00 miles), along with doing some strides at the end of every run especially my long runs.

here is my runs this week

• Monday 3.1
• Thursday 5.9 ( was supposed to be 6 but I wimped out and finished at the closest door at work cutting that 10th off. I dont want to make excuses but it was very hot)
• Friday- rest
• Saturday- tropical storm
• Sunday-9 @10:30 pace

total for the week: 18
total in training: 65.2

Eric