Running – Page 9 – My Thought Spot

2009 Goals

Running
I am going to stick with the goal of running 1000 miles for the year. I will try to pad the mileage early in the year to help with any unforeseen injuries. That will be 83.3 miles a month, or 19.2 miles a week. I am still running lower mileage right now because of injury, but I am getting much better and itching to get back up to some longer runs.

I would like to run at least 2 half marathons this year and 1 marathon.

I also want to set a 5K PR. I have a race coming up next week that I might actually be able to make a shot for the PR. Though I have not been running as many miles, I have been working on my endurance and lactate threshold. I believe I am much more capable of pushing my body further than I have before. The only thing that may hold me back is the fact that I just have not been able to put the miles in the last several weeks.

Reading
This is also going to be the same as last year. While I am pleased that I averaged almost 800 pages a month last year, the goal was not to average that. Rather, it was to read consistently. With some months going well over 1000 pages and one month under 300, I did not really achieve the spirit of the goal. I don’t mind reading more than the 800 pages a month, but I am making the goal to not go under 800 pages in a month.

Blogging
I don’t really have a blogging goal that I want to define for the whole year. I will work with that on a month to month basis. I want to be consistent. I may do a few months where I blog every day like I did in November.

Personal
I have some personal goals for the year that I am still defining, but probably won’t share here.

I also have some mini-goals that I want to work on. I have gained about 10 pounds since coming home to the US. Part of that is definitely muscle mass. I have been visiting the gym consistently over the last 6 weeks. But, all in all, I am up about 15 pounds from where I would like to be. It should not take me all year to get 15 pounds off. If I work hard I can do it within 3 months. I just have to stop snacking so much.

There’s my goals for 2009. Now time to sit down and make them happen. They won’t happen over night since they are long term goals. Just like a marathon, I have to plug away at it one step at a time.

December Goals Report

Before I announce my goals for 2009, which will seem quite familiar, I want to wrap up 2008.

Running
I ended the month with very little mileage. This was due to an injury to my foot in November. I only logged 19.6 miles for the month. That brought me to a yearly total of 883 miles. The goal was to reach 1000 miles. I missed it by 117 miles. I ran the whole year as if I would not have an injury. The plan was to run consistently to the end.

While I did not make my goal of 1000 miles, I did run 262 miles further than I did in 2007.

My best running month for 2008 was September in which I ran 104 miles.

Reading
I finished my reading for the year very strong. I read 1005 pages for a total of 9533 pages for the year. Though my goal was to read 800 pages a month and not necessarily average 800 pages, I still averaged 794. That is pretty close.

My best reading month for 2008 was January in which I read 1345 pages.

New Year’s Day run

I started a tradition last year of a long run on January 1st. that I hope to be able to continue. Last year I ran 8.6 miles on New Year’s day. It was the longest I had run in a while. This year was not much different. I have been out of commission for several weeks. While I have started running some again, yesterday’s run of 6.something miles was longer than I had run in a while.

This year I rode my bike to a state park that was just under 10 miles from home. When I got to the park I locked up my bike and headed off on a 6.something mile run through the woods and along the beach of Perdido Bay. This is a great place to run with a cleared trail all the way through the park. There are a few places to cut from trail to trail and extend the run. I stayed on the main path and just did an out and back. The path is very soft. Most of the way it is sandy with pine needles covering the sand. You get the softness of the sand, but because you are stepping on the pine needles the sand does not shift under your feet. It seems like a perfect running surface if you are looking for something soft to run on. Probably not very good for speed work.

When I got back to the parking lot I had a text message from a friend saying that he and his family were on their way to the park for a hike. I stuck around and did about 2 miles on the trail with them before jumping on the bike and heading back home. I was not dressed warm enough for a casual walk through the woods.

There were 2 geocaches at this state park that we had grabbed on 2 separate occasions. My friend and I also had taken a guided nature walk and did a 7 mile hike at the park. This was our 4th visit to the park in the last 10 days. Previous to that I had never been to the park before. The state owns 4,000 acres across the street that is also full of trails. I have not ventured over there yet, but it will probably become a favorite place to run.

Happy New Year everyone!

Vacation Week: Thursday Family Photo

The big event for Thursday was getting the 17 of us together at a park for family photos. It all went pretty well even though it took a very long time to work us all in. Each family had a color that they all wore. My family was red. We also had green, blue, yellow and purple. For some of the pictures we changed into white shirts.

The photographer was very patient with us. We found him through a web search of photographers in the area. My wife wrote several explaining what we were looking for. He was the only one who responded. We have not gotten the pictures back yet, but we were very pleased with the way he handled the large group.

We returned to the house to grab a bite to eat and recharge for a minute. I snuck upstairs and grabbed a 15 minute nap.

The next thing on the agenda was a candy factory. We visited Davidson’s of Dundee. They make citrus candy. We were given a short tour of the factory and then let loose to check out their products. Along with candy they sold different citrus fruits. We walked away with 2 bags of different oranges. The best part was the free samples.

That evening was our time to eat our Christmas dinner as a family and open gifts. We only brought gifts for the nieces and nephews. But Mom could not resist buying gifts for some of us. My bald brother got a brush and hair gel from Mom. She got a plastic nurses kit for my brother who graduated from nursing school. I got a toy cell phone to replace my iPhone with if it ever dies again. She also gave me some Dora the Explorer band aids to help with a common running injury that involves my chest.

We had our turkey dinner. The turkey was not set out to thaw early enough. It took much longer to cook than anticipated. I am not sure when we finally finished eating, but it was much later than we expected.

My little brother is working on the Couch to 5K running program. We went out that night to run together. I was going to show him how to run slower so that he can build up his aerobic capacity more easily. It did not take long to realize that I probably could not teach him to go any slower. Walking would have been faster than we were running. But, that is fine. When starting out to run most people push themselves and go too fast. That certainly was not his problem.

Happy Birthday from PlaneT3rry

Last Thursday night I was in the Knoxville area again and I got to meet up with PlaneT3rry for the third time. We are starting to make a habit out of this.

This time was special though, I had to be on my best behavior. He was finally going to let me meet his wife. Actually, we had to prove to her that I was really a man so she wouldn’t think strange things about us.

The plans were that I would pick up Terry after the two of them drove to a meeting she had. Then Terry and I would go have dinner and do some general running around with me as his chauffeur for the evening. After we painted Wal-Mart and the Post Office red, then I would take him home and meet Jen, his “lovely and talented wife.”

As is often the case, plans got changed. This time for the better. Jen was able to leave her meeting early and join us for dinner. We had a great time eating and talking. Then, all of a sudden, we all geeked out together. Jen pulled out her Palm Centro, while Terry was on his Palm T|X. I had my iPhone and we all silently conversed through text messages, Facebook exchanges, Twitter comments and verbal snide remarks.

We finally parted ways with Jen going home to get stuff together for a weekend trip while Terry and I set out on the mission.

For Terry the goal was to get the gift cards that he was giving away prepared and in the mail before his trip. My responsibility was to help him spend the extra money on 2 separate gift cards. He needed $2.32 on each card, but Wal-Mart would not let him buy the exact amount. He had to buy $5 cards and I had to spend the extra $2.68 (exactly) on each card as my birthday gift (coming up December 15).

Immediately I knew that I wanted some snacks to help me with my 11 hour drive from Knoxville to Pensacola the next day. The trail mix I picked out got us to within $1 per card. Fruit was the best way to make up the difference. I decided on Apples and Bananas. I had to pick just the right size to make up the extra dollar without going too much over.

The fun part was explaining to the cashier what we were trying to do. We did a little profiling and looked for a cashier that might be able to understand what we were doing. Needless to say, Terry and I don’t have a future on the FBI: Behaviorial Analysis Unit. The cashier we chose was just one step away from clueless.

We made a math error on the first card which ended up deleting $2.32 and leaving $2.68. The second card did not work at all. So our attempt to be clever failed to give the desired results.

The good that came out of it was I got the coolest spontaneous birthday gift. The trail mix and fruit was only a small part of it. The best part was acting like a couple of college kids trying to play a prank at the expense of Wal-Mart. It was fun acting half our age for a short time.