This will be my first marathon!

This is a 12 person team event.

But, new years bring new resolutions and goals, right? I went on my first run of the year yesterday and I’ll be heading out for today’s run here shortly. I have several new goals in mind this year - the biggest one is that I’ll be hitting the marathon circuit mid-year. I’m currently working on my race schedule for the year and looking for a web app that I can enter the races I plan on running and put them on the site here in a widget.

The first event of the year is an interesting race - it’s a showshoeing race! I love being in the mountains and love the snow - combining those loves with running sounds like an awesome idea! So, next Saturday I’ll be running a 5k snowshoe race in Park City - pictures and a race report to follow.

I found a website that looks pretty interesting - it lets you set a year goal and then track your progress on it, but you have to select from one of about five goals. I’m thinking about going for the 2500 miles in a year goal. Check it out over here.

To those who have been reading this blog the last year and especially those who have been commenting - Thanks! It’s nice to hear from fellow runners!

My brother-in-law, Josh, will be doing this with me!

This weekend my brother-in-law ran his first marathon and Adria and I went to Logan to support him - it was a bitter-sweet experience for me. It was a lot of fun to see Mark run the marathon, he did awesome, but it really frustrated me because he started running a few months after i did and both of us had a goal of a marathon when we started. I felt pretty inferior because he was doing a marathon and I haven’t done one yet. The difference is, he did a 5 month marathon training plan and I’ve taken the route of a longer-term approach to build up my body to be able to handle it without it killing me. Sure enough, when Mark ran the marathon, he had to stop multiple times, walk a fair amount and was sore and injured at the end. But, he did it. He did it in 5 hours, and I haven’t done it yet. I’m ok with that, sort of, but it was pretty frustrating for me.

On top of that, running has become very very routine for me. When I run, it’s pretty much the same distance over the same course at pretty much the same time. I think this has a lot to do with why I’m inconsistent with running - because it’s become routine, it’s something that i can just cut out and not feel guilty about it. I slice my routine up to get work accomplished all the time.

So, my current feelings on running are this: It’s routine, I don’t feel like I’m accomplishing anything or moving forward anywhere. I don’t feel anything competitive about it at all, I can do my workouts with very minimal effort - I never feel my runs afterwards and i don’t feel like I’m improving. The only races I run are 5k’s - the problem with that for me is that I know I can run a 5k, i want to find what I CAN’T run and push through that! Now, a lot of this certainly has a lot to do with my inconsistentcy, but I’m in a conundrum - I don’t feel motivated or excited about running right now - so I’m very inconsistent with it because I don’t look forward to it anymore.

So I came up with a new plan/approach - one that I feel pretty excited about. At least once a week I’m going to take a long run - today was my first one - I’ll increase the long run by 1 mile each week. So today I did 6.2 miles, the rest of the week will be recovery and training (doing my normal workouts of 3-5 miles/day) for next week’s run of 7 miles (I may pile some extra miles on there depending on how I feel) toward the middle of the week, if I’m feeling good enough for it, I may put on more than the normal training miles.

I don’t know why, but there is just something in me that feels that I HAVE to be doing at least one long run a week. If I don’t, I feel like I’m not really pushing myself or even accomplishing anything. I think it’s the same drive that lets me do what I do professionally - I often will push a deadline and do 6 weeks worth of work in 2 weeks - and then look for the next opportunity to do it again. Oddly enough, I feel most alive when I’m buried deep in a deadline and I’m pushing with all I have to get as much done as possible. So I think that treating running the same way will help me be as passionate about running as I am about my work (which is how I WANT to be).

So, to today’s run - for the first time in several months, I ran more than 4 miles in a training run - and it felt GREAT!!! The first 3 miles were hohum, but on mile 4 everything kicked in and I felt awesome - all my little aches and pains went away and I felt like I could go on forever. In fact, I was seriously thinking about doing another 4 miles around the block but decided not to because I needed to get to work. If I had left an hour or so earlier, I definately would have gone farther. I kept my heart-rate between 150 and 155 through it all and those last 2 miles just sailed by. I was seriously disappointed when I got back home. Now, for the first time in a long time, I feel the run in my leg muscles and it feels fantastic! And for the first time in a long time, I feel excitement and urgency about running.

So, there’s one other thing to do - Coach, what do you think? I know this doesn’t go with the plan, will it hurt my to do this? Will it mess up building my base properly? Can we build a plan that will be safe and productive that incorporates more challenge like this?

So, This morning I went for a quick run - and my Garmin died! I kept a pace around 150 or so and ran about 2.5 miles in about 30 minutes or so. That was yesterday’s run, just 12 hours late! I’ll be running again tonight so I can get back on track.

Here’s to another post later today!

- Oh, and I haven’t been eating Salmon since that first time either. So I’m eating Salmon for dinner every night this week.

As for the title of this post, I have always been a person who doesn’t like any kind of seafood - my wife is the same way. As a result, pretty much all of our kids are the same way. But, as I try to be more healthy and as we try to change our diet we keep running into “fish is the best meat you can eat” and we agree.

So, we’re trying to acquire a taste for fish (blech). For dinner tonight, I cooked two wild salmon steaks and cut-up and served one of them to all the kids and ate one myself. I managed to eat it, and overall it didn’t taste too bad. But, the smell in the house and the slight fishy taste of the salmon was pretty repulsive. Anyway, I’m going to be eating Salmon every day for the next two weeks in order to develop a taste for it. Adria took one bite and about gagged. She didn’t eat anymore than that, but she says she’ll have another bite tomorrow. Oh - two of the kids loved it and asked for multiple portions of it, the others hated it - I threatened them with only serving fish for the every meal for the next week - I’m so cruel!!!

This page contains links to materials that talk about or cover Heart Rate Training:

• The official Arthur Lydiard Site
• Here’s a great article about Arthur Lydiard
• A (not very well written/edited) collection of several of Arthur Lydiard’s training methods
• An essay by Coach about Heart Rate Training - Part 1
• An essay by Coach about Heart Rate Training - Part 1
• An essay by Coach about Heart Rate Training - Part 1

So, I went out running with her one day and…. nothing. It didn’t do too much for me but I kept going. After about a week I was hooked and went to the local running store and bought the gear I would need for it. I love a good challenge and as I started learning about UltraMarathons and Endurance Running, I realized that I really wanted to start participating in those and - eventually start winning them.

The next part of this story is already written up on “Why Heart Rate Training“.

If you read through my stats and my updates you’ll see I’m not a fast runner by any means. I’m good with that. I know that I’m building up my phsyiological ability to be a fast runner over great distances, and that’s what I truly want to be doing. I keep looking at the mountains here (most of them are 4,000 - 5,000 foot gains) and planning out training runs up them.

On Saturday, the training was 145 for 50 minutes. When I was about 25 minutes into it, I decided that I needed to get quite a way up that mountain over there. So, I altered my course and headed up. It took me a while because of the steepness of the hills, but I made it 4 1/2 miles before Adria called and said she needed me home and was coming to get me. I wanted my reward, so I turned around and burned back down the mountain.

It was 90 degrees out, I ran a total of 5.88 miles with an average HR of 145 and an elevation gain of 988 feet.

Today was kind of the same but I didn’t feel like heading up the moutain, the training plan was to do 35 minutes at 150. I stayed on flat ground and went 5.81 miles in 1:09 with an average HR 150.

Nourishment wise, I was unprepared though. If I had completed my circle I would have gone 8 miles but at 5.8 I was suddenly hit with a blood sugar problem so I pulled it into a gas station and called Adria. I asked the gas station attendant if she would mind if I stood there and ate some food while my wife brought me money. She said absolutely - that they had a guy stop there last week and pass out on the ground from running. She didn’t want a repeat of that! The reason I say I was unprepared is that I hadn’t eaten breakfast. I got up and started working and suddenly got the urge to go running, totally forgetting that I hadn’t eaten.

Fortunately I’m doing just fine, in fact I feel great! My leg muscles are a little tired, but nothing major. I was very careful not to slip into the anaerobic zone so I don’t think I’ll have any actual soreness in my legs. I really enjoyed these two runs, the extra time and distance was a blast! And unlike a few days ago, running at 150 didn’t bother me at all this time. I just hope that Coach doesn’t tell me my exuberance is going to negatively affect my training schedule.

There’s a large hill that most normal people would look at and say “There’s no way I’m walking up that thing!” so naturally, when I saw it I thought “I want to run up that, without stopping”. I ran up it really slow, but I did it without stopping and managed to keep my HR under 170. I’m going to go back and take a picture of it and put it up here.

Anyway, the pains from yesterday’s run were gone and this was a really enjoyable run.

Overall Stats:

50 Minutes / Avg HR 147 (my target was 145) / 3.2 miles / Max HR 168

I’m not sure what Coach will think about my HR going up that much higher than my target, hopefully he’ll let me keep doing these trails.

On top of that, it actually rained this morning (first time in over a month) so the air was pretty humid. That made for uncomfortable breathing through the whole run. Anyway, I slogged through it and managed to hit 2.89 miles in 35 minutes. Hopefully my twice weekly 150 HR runs won’t continue like this.

For more about me, check out this page. I’m writing up how I got into running here, how I got into Heart Rate Training here, and I’ll be collecting several resources about heartrate running here.

This blog will contain a lot of training updates, monthly race reports and commentary on running articles and blog posts from other bloggers. I also have several family members who are runners, I’ll probably write about them frequently as well.

I’ll probably talk very frequently about my Coach, Andrew Seeley. He’s an incredible runner and an awesome coach, if you’re looking for a good online coach, he’s the one!

I have an extremely competitive, addictive and dedicated personality - it is usually most obvious in my work - it is not uncommon for me to spend 48 hours straight at my desk writing code, sleep for a few hours and then pull another 48. I’m also blessed with ADHD and have a touch of OCD. The combination of all this means that once I decide to do something, I throw myself into it fully. Nothing will distract me from accomplishing my goals, in fact I generally shut down anything else I’m doing and everyone else around me. My wife is the only one capable of moderating me. Once I get into this mode, I meticulously break everything into small tasks and then move forward one task at a time, not moving to the next task until the one I’m working on is pristinely completed.

So, when I decided that I was going to become a runner, more specifically I decided that I was going to become a ultraMarathon Endurance Runner, I created tasks for myself that I believed were in-line with achieving my goals. These tasks included: running 12 miles once a week, running 4 miles of 1/2 mile sprints once a week, speed climbing 4,000 feet to the top of a mountain once a week and light 5 mile runs every other day in between the more difficult tasks. That was just the beginning - that was my plan to get ready for real training.

The problem was, I was completely out of shape and overweight. I decided that didn’t matter, that I would just set these goals and accomplish them. It probably would have worked - if I didn’t seriously injure myself. The compounding problem here was that I would only run at near my top speed. This meant that I was stopping about every quarter mile (I did make it to the point where I was only stopping every half mile on 4 mile runs) in order to catch my breath - then I would pound ground again until I felt like I was going to pass out. I worked up to where I felt like I was ready to give the 12 miler my first shot. I blogged about it over here. I did it, it hurt like crazy but I did it. The next day I did a 4 mile run and only made it 3.1 (I insisted on doing a 5k before I quit).

I was in a lot of pain but I didn’t care, I considered that the price I had to pay to get in shape and meet my goals. I took the pain seriously and worked with it as much as I could, trying not to seriously injure myself but I mostly just ignored it. That’s when Adria (my wife) read about Heart Rate Training and started exchanging email with Andrew Seeley - and decided to pay him to coach her. Remember I said that she was the only one that could moderate me? She told me I needed to contact Andrew and consider using his coaching methods. She went over what it was and what Andrew had set up for her, it sounded pretty good. So, I emailed Andrew and told him where I was and what I was doing. I told him I was interested in his techniques and that if he had a better plan, I was willing to drop mine and give it a try. He wrote back and told me that I was on the road to injury and that I needed to stop doing what I was doing. Actually, he put it in my terms - he said we needed to “reboot the system and rewrite the software” - and that was something that I could totally understand.

I’m a man of science, and Andrew explained everything to me from a scientific basis and it totally made sense to me. He explained exactly why I was winded so frequently and what I needed to do about it. He told me to wear a heart rate monitor (something I had never done) and to run at a 140 heart rate for 45 minutes. He explained that going that slow would be hard for me but that I needed to make sure I went slow enough that my heart rate stayed down. It was slow all right - barely faster than walking! But what amazed me was that I was able to run 2 1/2 miles without stopping. In fact, when I did stop I was barely breathing heavily and it didn’t hurt at all. The next day he told me to run at 150 for 30 minutes. This pace felt a bit better but it was still much slower than I had been running. In 30 minutes I covered almost 3 miles without stopping and was mildly breathing heavily once I stopped - I was hooked.

Running slower than a ten minute mile is almost embarassing to me - it’s that competitive nature. But it’s been several weeks now and I can definately see a big improvement in myself. I get very frustrated with my body though because my heart rate is so high at such a slow pace. I know that it will eventually get to the point where I’ll be able to sustain very fast speeds for very long distances but I’m very impatient. I want to be doing really hard training runs, I want to challenge myself and feel like I’ve accomplished something. For now though, I know I’m building my base. I can only progress by doing this part correctly and by building my body up to the point where it’s able to handle the things I want it to do. I’m just frustrated by the waiting

This blog will be about my frustrating journey to aerobic fitness and then my journey to accomplishing endurance activities. I’m really looking forward to that last part!

I created this blog to keep my running blogging seperate from my professional and personal (family) blog.

By trade, I’m a computer programmer specializing in business applications. About a year ago I decided to build create a new web company focussed on organizing the blogosphere. That effort is close to coming to fruition, we have several very cool applications that we’re about to release that include a blog search engine (that actually works as compared to Technorati), a news identification system (it’s basically the AP NewsWire for the blogosphere) and a very deep analytics engine for the blogosphere.

My wife and I have been married almost 14 years now and we have 8 awesome kids. They range from 16 - 1 year and we have a set of 2 year old twins. The greatest things about having my own business is that I get to control my schedule and can spend time with the family as frequently as I desire.

We live on 2 1/2 acres in beautiful Mapleton Utah. When time permits, we raise animals and have an acre garden for raising our own food. This year we don’t have any of that going on due to the incredible stress of building my own business, however I’m hoping that next year we’ll be able to repopulate our barnyard and get a full garden going.

One of the beautiful things about Mapleton, besides being mostly farmland just 10 minutes from Provo, is that we’re literally surrounded on 3 sides by mountains that are part of the Rocky Mountain Range. I absolutely love speding time in the mountains either hiking and/or camping. I don’t have nearly as much time for that as I would like to, but I try to summit at least once a month.

I’m new on the road to becoming a runner - that story is over here. In High School I was a wrestler in both collegiate and freestlye. I was also a very commited body-builder. I did a fair amount of running in my training, but it was never a focus, it was simply a way to improve my stamina on the mat.