Refocusing

Annie returned from Opera in the Ozarks last Saturday and we've spent the week hanging out and getting her ready for her next summer program, Emerald City Opera, out in Steamboat Springs, CO. She left today (we drove down to National airport and I dropped her off) and she's now in Denver awaiting her flight to Hayden, CO, which is about 20 minutes from Steamboat Springs. She'll be out there for three weeks and then will return to Baltimore for the forseeable future.

All this has taken away from my CFA studying and workout schedule, which is OK. I'm well enough ahead on CFA stuff that I'm not overly concerned, and really, taking time off from working out to spend with Annie is a no-brainer. Now that she's gone for a few more weeks, I can refocus my efforts on training up for the fall. I have about 5 weeks until the Cheetah Run in Cincinnati (August 30th), and three weeks until the Full Moon Run. Now, I haven't registered for the Full Moon Run yet, because I am debating whether I'll be in any shape to run it. For one, I have three weeks to really get back into running form, which is semi-possible. It's not a timed race or anything quite so intense, but I'd like to be able to do the full 7 miles without sucking wind at any point. Also, the race is on August 16th, which is two days after I get back from my vacation. I won't have any chance to run that week, although I will be hiking with 30 pounds of gear on my back, so that is it's own exercise, I suppose.

So, tomorrow I'll head out for a 7 or 8 miler in the morning to get back on track. I would normally spend the afternoon by the pool relaxing, but I have tons of work coming due in the early part of this week, so I will be spending my afternoon in the office trying to play catch up and stay ahead of the deadlines.

Mountaineers are Mostly Fat

That's the verdict from a recent study of the nation's obesity rates. Thankfully, my home state of West Virginia came in second and was not the state with the highest concentration of lard. That honor goes to Mississippi, which is completely unsurprising. Just about everyone I have ever seen identify themselves as Mississippians is fat. In fact, most of the people I have seen identified as being from the South, have been at least overweight. Amazingly, almost 70% of the populations in the top 10 are overweight or obese...that includes children as well.

I remember another study that attempted to quantify the monetary effect that this chronic obesity epidemic has on the U.S. economy per year and while I can't remember the exact amount, it was in the hundreds of billions of dollars, which is just depressing. Thus far in my short life I have been blessed with a high metabolism and the ability to eat junk food without too many consequences. I know that won't last forever, but that's part of why I run...to stoke the furnace that is my metabolism so I can eat whatever I want and go out the next morning and burn it off or turn it into muscle. I also don't want to be obese and face all the health problems and lifestyle problems that goes along with it.

Thus, I went out and did some hill sprints this morning, upping my number to 5 for the next two weeks. Tomorrow I'll get another 5 miles in as well. This way I will be able to burn off today's lunch. We're going out to eat because one of my colleagues is leaving the firm at the end of the month to go to the University of Chicago to get his MBA. Our choice is Andy Nelson's BBQ out in Cockeysville, MD. I plan on enjoying a beef brisket, corn bread, taters, beans and a side of Memphis dry rub ribs. Oh, and a sweet tea for good measure. So it was imperative that I go into today with a calorie deficit and that I hit the road hard tomorrow morning to burn off what has to be thousands of calories I will intake today.

And in recent root beer news, I tried the Whole Foods store brand (365? Is that the brand?) root beer last night and have to say I was pretty pleased all things considered. I mean, it was twice as expensive as Sam's Choice, coming in at $2.49 for a six pack, but then again, Sam's Choice is always the low price. But Whole Foods makes theirs with cane sugar, which is something you usually don't see in mass-produced canned root beers. It had a nice birch flavor and the cane sugar was not too much as to make it overly sweet. A solid option if you don't feel like shelling out $5 for four Boylan's or Virgil's, which are the other two brands our Whole Foods stocks.

I also tried Boylan's Birch Beer the other night when Annie and I went out for pizza. It also uses cane sugar and was very good, although it didn't really stand out from IBC or Whole Foods. Given a choice between, say, Boylan's and Whole Foods, I would go with Whole Foods because it tastes just as good and is cheaper. But, Berghoff's remains my all time favorite.

And with that, I'm off to gorge on brisket and pork!

Catch up

Per usual, life got in the way of my running and I didn't run for 4 days. I was in Springfield, VA attending my aunt's 65th birthday party on Friday and Saturday and by the time I returned to Baltimore, it was about 95 degrees out, which is too hot to run enjoyably. I picked Annie up from the airport Saturday evening and then slept in on Sunday because I had been up ass-early all week and then again on Saturday morning to eat breakfast at the hotel. Monday morning I remember my alarm going off and hitting snooze, per usual. But then I didn't hear it go off again and woke up on my own after 6 AM, which it s too late to go running and still make it back to shower and get ready for work on time. Bummer.

I got up yesterday and did 4.5 miles without too much trouble. The air quality was horrible and the 4 days off slowed me down, hence the shorter run. Last night, after a full day of work and CFA studying, we went to dinner with Annie's sister and her new boyfriend. They've been itching to go out to dinner with us for a while, and even agreed to drive up to Baltimore from Northern VA for the event, so we couldn't say no. We ate at XS, a relatively new Japanese restaurant up near Penn Station. It was pretty good all around. Annie and I split Vietnamese spring rolls as an appetizer. She had "King King" sushsi and I had chicken Yakisoba. I finished off with a piece of Boston Creme Cheesecake, which was very good.

So, we didn't get back until 10 last night and got to bed about 11:30. This morning, I didn't hear my alarm at all until 5:50, when I realized it was in my nightstand drawer. No idea hwo that happened, but it probably involves me hitting snooze and putting it in the drawer subconciously while half asleep. Very weird. So, again, I awoke too late to get a workout in. It's very frustrating, but I am determined to get speedwork in tomorrow morning and another run in on Friday.

Annie flies out to Colorado on Saturday so I have to take her down to National Airport that afternoon, so I'll probably take Saturday off from running so I can be fresh for Sunday morning. I missed my long run last weekend so I need to get back towards a schedule!

Sprints + Long Run = Sore Monday

This weekend I learned a valuable lesson: running sprints one day and then a long run the next is not the best idea at this point. While it didn't hobble me in any way, doing two intense workouts back to back definitely tired out my legs and they didn't really feel OK until midway through yesterday. And even still, there was extra tightness to work out this morning when I got on the road for an easy 5 miler. But, the stiffness went away after about a mile and this afternoon my legs feel fine. They should be just fine for a tempo run tomorrow morning.

This Friday night I have to drive to Springfield, VA for my aunt's 65th birthday party. My parents are springing for a hotel room for me, which is totally sweet because a.) driving back to Baltimore from Springfield at midnight after a full day of work and then celebrating would suck and b.) there's an open bar and it would be a shame to miss out on it because I had to drive home at the end of the night. However, this does mean that I won't be running on Saturday morning, which is probably just as well since I do want to get in a quality long run on Sunday. The good news is that I'll be leaving the office early on Friday so I can miss as much of the Washington rush hour traffic as possible. If I can leave Baltimore by 3, I'll be happy.

So, my goal is to do a tempo run tomorrow, easy run on Thursday and some speed work on Friday before taking Saturday off. Sunday's long run will be around 8 miles, more if I feel like it, but after going a month or more without a solid 10 miler or greater, I need to rebuild my distance from the ground up.

Got my Supply Back

Thankfully, my refill arrived today in the mail, so I won't be having a massive cardiac event on the roads of Baltimore tomorrow morning. Although, it took a full week for it to arrive, which means that a.) I need to order my next refill twice as early as I think I need to and b.) Medco needs to hire more people so they can fill prescriptions faster. Thankfully my condition isn't so bad that I can't survive (literally) without my medicine for a few days.

Anyway, I'm dosing back up on my meds and should be OK for my long run tomorrow morning. Today I slept in a little and then went out to kill two birds with one stone. I headed out around 10 AM to try my hand at hill sprints. I need to get faster, and one of the ways I'm going to do that is to spend one day a week on interval training. Unfortunately, there's not a track near downtown Baltimore because, well, it's Baltimore and not suburbia. That leaves me with only a few options for speed training:

1. Find a relatively long stretch of road on which to do level intervals. Not a bad otpion and one I will probably experiment with in the coming weeks. But I would think you need a street at least 0.25 miles long with only one or two banking turns (like a track) for it be work. In Baltimore, there are streets that fit this bill, although you then have to factor in intersection traffic, location, and pedestrians. At 6 AM, these should be limited.

2. Do hill sprints to maximize training over a shorter distance per sprint. This is what I have opted for today, and it worked out fairly well.

So we'll see how it goes. Doing speed workouts in the gym on the treadmill sucks, as does running on treadmills in general for me, so anything I can do outdoors is a plus.

Tomorrow is a packed day overall as I'll get up early to get my long run in, then come back to shower and change and head to the office for several hours of catch-up and then CFA studying before treating myself to visiting the tent sale going on down in Harbor East. Falls Road Running is one of the vendors and if the deals are right, I'm on the lookout for a new pair of running shorts. It'll be a nice reward for spending the morning and early afternoon at the office on what should be a day of rest were I not married to my job.

Say Yes to (Prescription) Drugs

That was the moral of this morning's run. It seems that every time I think I re-order my heart medicine, it takes longer than it should to get the refill in the mail. I save a ton of money by doing it via mail, but it's tough to know when I need to order a refill so as to avoid running out of pills before it arrives. This is what happened this time around. I ordered my refill on July 5th and it wasn't shipped out until yesterday morning. In the meantime, I've had to ration my meds and in the process, missed several days' worth of doses. In day to day life, this isn't a big deal. But when my heart rate gets above 160 or so, it has a detrimental effect on me, which I rediscovered this morning. Almost from the instant I started this morning's run, I felt sluggish and winded. My heart was working overtime since it didn't have the usual dose of medicine to prevent the skipping.

After just 2.5 miles, I was done. I could have kept going, but it felt like I was running through some thick soup (and it wasn't all that humid out this morning) and was getting short of breath. So I cut my run in half and walked home. Thus, the moral is to order your meds well in advance so you don't feel like a 75 year old cardiac patient when you go running.

I got 5 miles in on Tuesday morning without any problems, but I had just stopped taking my medicine at that point so I had a built up reserve in my body.

I took Wednesday off because I woke up exhausted. I went back to sleep for another 90 minutes and felt much better the rest of the day. Good decision!

Tomorrow I think I will try a new workout and do some hill sprints. There's a fair sized hill by Federal Hill Park that is about 0.10 miles long, which is just long enough to make a sprint worth the while. Doing 4 of those after a 2 mile warm up followed by a one mile cool down should make for a good workout. The weekend is pretty open at this point, so I will see about getting some cross training in on Saturday and then the long run on Sunday morning.

Back from the Holiday

I always have the best running intentions going into a weekend at my parents' house in West Virginia. Alas, they always end up remaining just that, good intentions. The story was the same this weekend, as I fully intended to get a 5-6 miler in yesterday. However, when I awoke yesterday it was raining and then I went back to bed and that was all she wrote. So, no running this weekend but I'm OK with that, as I enjoyed some home cooking and quiet time away from Baltimore.

However, I now need to get back on the ball and continue my good progress from last week. That means a 5 miler tomorrow morning, I swear! It's supposed to be humid and hot this week, but that's par for the course in Baltimore in July. I'd like to run Monday and Tuesday, take Wednesday as off/cross training, then run Thursday and Friday. Saturday would be another cross training day followed by the usual Sunday long run. This is my goal for the week. That would come out to be about 30 miles for the week. Am ambitious goal, I know, considering how poorly I have been adhering to a schedule since April. But there's no better time than now to impose some structure.

Unfortunately, pulling long hours at the office and studying for the CFA have to be crammed in there as well.