Catch Me If You Can

Catch Me If You Can is a new site dedicated to racing bibs. Well, maybe not the bibs themselves, but the stories behind them. Terry, from the planet3rry blog, has set up this site so that runners can send pictures or scans of bibs or other items from a race along with the race reports. He started out thinking just race numbers, but has very quickly expanded his criteria to pictures of shoes or something else that may be significant to the runner as it pertains to the race.

Non runners may not find it that interesting, but I believe most runners like to read good race reports. Count me in. Also, look for some bibs and stories to be submitted by yours truly.

Underwater photos of whale sharks

Whale shark head.Here are some photos from our whale shark trip. They are not very clear, but actually look much better than the printed originals. I used Picasa from Google Labs to clean them up. Click on them to see a larger version. Be sure to check out the original post that was posted August 16.

The first picture is his mouth. If you look under his mouth you can see a set of snorkeling fins. This can give you Whale shark bodyan idea of the size of the creature. Then there is a fin to the top right of the photo which gives you perspective again.

The water was very murky. I have been scuba diving where you could see well over 100 feet. Once I was in 120 feet of water and you could easily see the details of the bottom of the boat. TWhale shark mouth.he day these photos were taken the visibility was 20 feet or less. When you got far enough away from the fish to take a picture or even really see it from end to end the visibility would make it hard to even see that there was any animal there at all.

When I first jumped in the water I stuck my head in and looked for the shark. All I saw was mouth. A little disconcerting to say the least. The boat dumps you in at the front of the shark so that you can swim along with it. If you are not a strong swimmer, then you would miss the opportunity to see it. So getting out at the front, and therefore the mouth, you get a chance to see the whole fish.

Three days of rest. Helpful?

Great 7 mile run on Saturday. No running Sunday. Monday was a speed workout that was scrubbed because of driving to see the whale sharks. Tuesday was swimming with the whale sharks and driving home. So I had 3 days of rest from running.

Did it help my run this morning by being off? No. I did not do poorly today. In fact the run felt great, which to me is important, though the time of the run was a bit slow. Not too slow to be bummed. 53:16 was this week’s 5 miler and last week was 52:05. A difference of 14 seconds per mile slower. Last week I even walked a good bit of the last mile. I overdid it early on in the run I guess.

All that said, I do know that rest days help. Stringing 3 in a row is nice to do on occasion. Maybe the swimming and snorkeling I did affected me. I know the snorkeling gave me cramps in my calves. They were very sore last night, though I did not notice any soreness today.

Whale Sharks!

Boy are those things big! We drove to the island of Holbox on Monday with a couple of friends. We played at the beach and basically bummed around on Monday evening. After the six hour drive, it was kinda nice to just bum. The mosquitoes about carried us off. And they said it is not even mosquito season right now.

Boats on the beachThe hotel where we stayed was right near the beach. Not on the beach, but I don’t think walking a block was asking too much to get there. The water was very warm right near the shore, but as we got further out, it cooled off. You could walk out a long way before there was any significant drop off in depth. With the water calm as it was that evening, it was a great place to just swim. I enjoyed swimming until it felt like my arms were going to fall off. The visibility was pretty poor so we had trouble finding one of our snorkel and goggle sets when it was lost in 3.5 feet of water.

Tuesday morning we met with our tour boat. We took a 2 hour trip to where the whale sharks should have been. They don’t stay in the same spot from day to day, so you just have to get close to where they were seen yesterday and then putt around till you find them. There were 14 boats at one point looking for the whale sharks. We found some, but they did not stay at the surface. So we all spread out and started looking. Finally we caught up with a couple that stayed at James and David ready to jump in.the surface and let us swim with them. They were huge. We did not have the biggest ones to swim with. The one I got to be with was about 15-18 feet long. Some from our group were with one that was about 20-22 feet long.

We had some underwater disposable cameras. I will get those pics up soon. I hope they turned out nice. We did not have very good visibility to get good pictures. Also, you could not get far enough away from them to take a good picture and understand their size. I dove down to get a picture from underneath the shark, but when I got low enough to take a picture, I could not see the whale shark. It was just too murky.

Great trip. If you get the chance, then it is worth the time to do it. I don’t know what the going rate for the trip is as our friends that we went with do promotions for different tours and hotels. They got their trip free by going with this company and we paid about $65 (USD) each. The company we went with, Monkey’s Tours, were very professional. I imagine they are the most expensive tour company there.

Good 7 miler

Knowing that I was going to be running for close to an hour and a half, I decided to not try anything new. No new shorts, new shoes, new shirts. I did, however, opt for my new socks and hat. I figured a hat could not bother me and my socks I have worn on enough short runs to know they would be fine. But…I could not find my fanny pack. Which meant that I could not carry my Sport Beans that I am trying out and my water. Water could be bought along the way, but that meant that I then had to carry money.

The only running clothes I have with pockets are a new pair shorts. I did not want to wear them, but I ended up doing so. They have never caused problems, but the longest I have run in them was 5.5 miles. Just about a 1 hour run.

Great run. I felt great. The Sport Beans apparently did a wonderful job. I was not starving when I got home even though all I had to eat before I left was a granola bar. About 5 miles into the run I was disappointed that it was almost over.

With the exception of one of my toes feeling a bit rubbed, the run felt good.

My old shoes have always been too short. I did not buy them with running in mind. I recently lost two toenails because my toes were hitting the front of the shoe. The damage was done in May, but the nails just fell off within the last couple of weeks. With no nail to protect my toe, I have a huge blood blister on the tip of it now. Ouch!

I did not realize that I had rubbed my nipple raw until I jumped in the pool last night. I had taken a dip in the pool yesterday morning and a shower, but both were very cold water. The pool was much warmer in the evening, so I noticed the tender spot on my chest.

And the shorts… Well, I really should have stuck to my original plan. Though these shorts are nice and had never given me any problems in the 2 weeks I have run in them, they did yesterday. I have chaffed inner thighs. I will have to walk around tenderly for a day or so. I am trading my undergarments for compression shorts for the day. Since they are black, I will have to remember to not wear white pants to church today.

Stick to your plan. Don’t try new stuff. And remember, the old stuff can hurt you too.

The run was 7.28 miles in 1:20:42 seconds. A pace of 11:05. That is a great pace for me to be running long runs at this stage of my half marathon training. On race day, if I can push myself, I think I can be at my goal pace of 10 minutes. If not, it will at least be better than my last half.