Month: August 2008

A week in summary

This will be a catch up post. I was out of town most of the week. Can you believe we did not have any Internet access where we were? None! Barbaric.

We were in a little village not too far from the big city doing another camp for the Deaf. This time it was just the Deaf from our church in Merida. We would like to expand this to include all of the Yucatan Deaf. But at this point we are the only Christian ministry for the Deaf that we are aware of.

Camp
Tuesday
Before picking people up to head to camp, I had to swing by the immigration office to fill out the paperwork to cancel our visas. We will be leaving the country in less than 2 weeks. I got out of the immigration office much later than planned and started my rounds of getting everyone to the church.

Camp started well and we were able to run some events and give out medals that first night. We had an obstacle course. I was not in the competition for a medal, but I did run the course in the second fastest time. I lost to a 17 year old. I was pleased.

We had a good service that night with Bill, the pastor of our church, speaking.

Wednesday
I preached both services on Wednesday. We had some good games with no major injuries. That is always good.

Thursday
Bill preached both services on Thursday. We took the whole group to the beach. The girls went to one side of the world’s longest pier and the boys went to the other. I have never been to the beach in Progreso when it has been so nice. There was hardly any wind and the water was clear enough we could see our feet. That is special.

Friday
I preached the final service. My son took the Gold medal in scripture memory. We gave out Gold, Silver and Bronze medals for the team competition. By doing that, we were assured that everyone would get a medal. We happened to have 2 Golds left over so we gave them to the cooks.

Running
Wednesday
I ran 4.66 miles. It was from the town we were in, Chablecal, through the town of Dzibilchaltún and just a little past that. Then turn around and back to camp. I did not sleep well that night before. In fact, it may be better said that I did not sleep. I was pleased with my distance and pace despite the lack of sleep.

I noticed that there were a lot of bikes and few cars that I saw on my trip back to the village where we were in camp. They were headed to the big city where we lived.

Friday
I did not really plan to run on Friday, but would do so if I woke up in time. I did, so I did. I ran just 2.32 miles. It was the same route from Wednesday, but I turned around earlier. This time, though, I took note of the number of vehicles I saw on the road. There were 23 bicycles, 9 motorcycles/scooters, and 6 cars. You can tell from this that we were not in a very wealthy place.

I took my camera and snapped a shot of the road I ran on. It was very narrow.

Bananas
We have 2 bunches of bananas growing in the field next door. I chopped one bunch down yesterday after we got back from camp. There are close to 200 bananas on it. The second bunch will have to be harvested after we leave.

Win Dean Karnazes’ new book

Over at the Run Bulldog Run blog he is giving away 5 copies of Dean Karnazes’ new book
50/50: Secrets I Learned Running 50 Marathons in 50 Days. My copy of Ultramarathon Man was won in a giveaway like this. It would be cool to get another book by Karnazes in the same way.

If you want to get in on the action then check out the Run Bulldog Run website. He requires a couple of things to be eligible. First you need to subscribe to his RSS feed either through an RSS reader, or via email. Then you need to leave a comment and tell which method you chose at the original post. You also need to check out his page of motivational quotes and email him a quote by a specific person. This lets him know you are a real person and can follow directions. Optionally, as a third task, you can write about it on your blog or somehow tell others about the contest.

I heard Dean talk about this book in a recent interview at Endurance Planet. I am excited to read the book when it comes out. I recently re-read Ultramarathon Man and am curious as to what adventures Dean will tell about in this book.

Week 7

Week 6
Monday
An easy 2 miles was the plan and I did everything I could to not deviate from that. 2 miles at a 10:20 pace. Perfect timing.

Wednesday
Plan was 7 miles with 3 being 3X1600 repeats at 8:22 pace. I ran almost a mile warm up, stretched and then started my intervals. The first 1600 meters was 8:45. I did 800 meters of recovery before doing the second interval in 8:46. The final 1600 was 8:34.

It was not quite as fast as it should have been, but I am pleased. Total run was only 6 miles. A bit short on my cool down run.

Saturday
This was a fun day for me. I ran for 14.25 miles (plan called for 14). My pace was 10:57 per mile. It was slower than it should have been, but I was more focused on the distance. This is the longest run I have ever done and it felt really good. I did not feel like I was over doing my abilities.

I don’t have a 14 mile route, nor any other routes that I could easily put together to make that distance. So between mile 2 and 3 I just took off down a side street and added .9 miles into the run. At mile 9 I dropped by the house and ditched the CamelBak and asked my wife to have a glass of water sitting out in front for me in about 40 minutes. I did 4 more miles before swinging by and grabbing that water. I finished the run with another 1.25 miles.

I did not have any sock or shoe problems this week like I had last week.

Biking
I biked 3 days this week. Twice for exercise and once just because I was dropping my truck off at the mechanic and biked home instead of taking a taxi. On Thursday I hit a new biking distance as well with a ride of 15.71. I rode a total of 26.1 miles this week.

Week 7
Monday: 2 miles at 10:26 pace.

Wednesday: 6 miles with 4 miles at a tempo pace of 8:56. I don’t know if I will run at all on Wednesday, but if I do, it will probably not be 6 miles. I will be in camp and probably won’t make the time to run.

Saturday: 16 miles at 10:26 pace. I am very excited about this run. Pushing to a new distance of 14 miles did not seem daunting. 16 however, does. But I also know that once I reach that point, then I should be able to finish the marathon distance.

Camp for the Deaf in the south

Earlier I wrote about our camp in the northern part of Mexico. Next week we have our camp for the Deaf in the Yucatan peninsula region. Currently it will just be our church, but in the future we would like to see Deaf from all over this region of Mexico attend.

We are going with an Olympic theme for obvious reasons. We have a few events that we will borrow from the real games to play out in our own setting. We also have medals that we will present the winners. The medals are all identical, but the ribbons will indicate Gold, Silver and Bronze.

We will use a hula hoop to play discus. This should be pretty easy for the less physically capable.

Shot put might be a bit tougher. The shots will be water balloons. There might just happen to be a few people who get hit with these. Certainly a lot less painful than a 16 lb. shot.

Archery will be performed with darts and balloons.

The Triathlon will be a combination of three common items: jump rope, hula hoop and baseball bat. The jump rope will be used to jump while moving from one point to another. The hula hoop will be rolled along a designated path. The bat will be at the end of a run. The contestant has to put their head on the bat and spin around 10 times and then try to make their way back to the finish line. A timed event of course.

One of the unique events we will be doing is a team standing long jump. This will be a relay type event. The team members will be in a line in which the person at the front of the line will take a standing long jump. The rest of the team will move up to the landing spot and the next member takes their jump. This continues until all team members have a chance to jump. The team that jumps farthest overall will win.

There are a few other events planned, but that is the idea of our games.

We are expecting about 20 people at camp to make all this happen.

July Goals Report

Running
I ran 65.4 miles during the month of July. This was a low month again, but it is picking up quickly. August should be just over 90 miles for the month. Marathon training has a way of doing that to you. I am 35 miles behind my goal for the year and have run 563 miles for 2008. I would like to be ahead of the goal, but I am also trying not to over train for this first marathon. I really feel like I could run more without endangering my training, but I just don’t want to push it.

I have also started biking much more. I am incorporating that into my exercise week at least twice and sometimes three times a week.

Reading
I am not sure what happened to my reading log this last month. My records say that I only read 582 pages in 4 books. I am convinced I read at least one more book, but I cannot figure out what I read. I picked up some pretty easy reading books this last month and tore through them in a couple of days. Until I figure out what other book or books I might have read, I am sticking to what my log says.

I re-read Ultramarathon Man which I reviewed once before. I also read Re-Entry, which I wrote a post about during this last month. I started a book in July that I am going to finish soon. I plan to write a full review on that one as well. It is a missionary biography which I am very much enjoying.