Back in Business

Whoa, a blog post?! It must be getting into training season again. Yep, it is. Welcome back to those who stumble across this again. Its been a long off season. Last I left you, dear reader, I was through with Rim to Rim to Rim and staring an off-season in the face. So, what have I done with my time? Well, not much. I didn't take nearly enough time off, spending just a week not running, and that was only because I was worried about tendonitis. About once a month I did a run of at least 5 hours, so my endurance is OK. I tried to work on speed, but wasn't as dedicated as I should have been. Same old story.

So, here we are in March. January brought the birthday run which was 40 miles. It went pretty lousy in that I did 20 miles of PCT with Gonzo from I-8 to Mt. Laguna, but it was a miserable time. I don't know what went wrong - probably not enough drinking or salt, but I hit a major bonk and died. It took a long nap and a lot of mountain dew to get me back on the trails, but eventually I finished my 41 miles. Next year I get to tack another mile on.

What else has gone on . . . . I did a snowshoe race up in Lake Tahoe, a 10K, and came in 9th overall and first master (40+). That was pretty cool, even though it was a very small race. Snowshoe racing is fun. I can see getting very used to doing a few of those a year. When we had the big dump of snow last week, I went out for a few hours and had a ball. I may have found my "thing". Also had a great run in Joshua Tree in the snow as well.

The other fun thing is that I went and dropped some dough on a really fancy Garmin 410 with heart rate monitor. I'm pretty serious about trying to trim some time off of my runs, and the watch is a cruel taskmaster. I don't want to wear it on every run, but it became time to start being a hardass once and a while. So far, so good. I still need to learn about zone training for the heartrate stuff, but I am enjoying the graphic depictions of my runs. Now if I can just figure out what they mean. I've included some of my runs below. I've also decided that its time for more pavement speed work. I'm reading The Lore of Running, which I've renamed The Bore of Running because it is so freaking dry, which has convinced me I need to do two things - more shorter speedwork and lose weight. So I bought Training Weight, a great book about endurance athletes and weight, and am trying to eat better. So far, pretty good, but could be a lot better.

That's all for now. I'll try to post more now that I'm training again and get some pictures out. Here's my graphs for a few of my runs . . .