Bryan's Weblog of Stuff

Ordering New Shoes

I just ordered some new running shoes. I've got no complaints about my current shoes, so  I went with the same model, but a different color--black. This is my first time ordering shoes online, so I've got my fingers crossed.

Given this recent article from the NY Times, I feel a little guilty for not going down to my local running shop, but I was able to save about $20 by buying them online, compared to what I would've paid locally. For the record, I ordered from NBWebExpress.com. Any experience with them?

My new shoes: New Balance MR858BK

By Bryan at 2:15 PM , in Health and Fitness - Permalink
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With one more day of running in February, I am on pace for 70+ miles for the month. This will be a first for me. My previous high was 58 miles in January. So far, my body is holding up.

Reflecting on my time for the Cowtown 5K on Saturday (28:45), I wonder how much improvement I can expect in my next 5K, which is in 3.5 weeks, at the end of Week 8 of Hal Higdon's 5K Intermediate training program? I improved from the Jingle Bell Run to the Cowtown by about 2.5 minutes. Surely, I won't see the same improvement with only 4 weeks between races this time. Besides, since the Jingle Bell Run, I am also 25+ lbs. lighter, and have really ramped up my training compared to what I was doing prior to the Jingle Bell Run.

What is a reasonable expectation?

By Bryan at 12:23 PM , in Health and Fitness - Permalink
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2008 Cowtown 5K Results

Well, we did it—we got our butts up out of bed and hauled them to Sundance Square to run the Cowtown 5K this morning (in the freezing cold, mind you—average temperature for the 5K was 36.5°F). I was shooting for a sub-30 minute time, which would beat my previous (and only) 5K by over a minute. In the end, I ended up running it in 28:44.7, which was good for 472 overall, 329 among men, and 44 in my age group. Not bad for my second effort, and it definitely looks like the training is paying off! Here are some links:

• My official race results
• Motionbased.com data

One last note—I cracked 200 lbs. this morning, weighing in at 199! That puts me 14 from my goal of 185.

By Bryan at 6:18 PM , in Health and Fitness - Permalink
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Running The Cowtown 5K In Morning

Julie and I are running in the Cowtown 5K tomorrow. At 8:15 AM, the gun will go off for the start of the Cowtown 5K, which is one of 6 races that makes up the overall Cowtown Marathon event. For me, this is my test race at the mid-point of Hal Higdon's 5K Intermediate Training Program.

Earlier this afternoon, we went over to the Expo to check things out and get our timing chips. It was our first time at a marathon expo. I also picked up a lightweight New Balance running jacket for 50% off. Not bad, huh?

To help get in the mood for this weekend, we went to see the encore showing of Spirit of the Marathon last night. We both really, really enjoyed it. It was funny, it was intense, it was emotional, but most of all it was good!

For a while, I've suspected that I might have caught the bug, after watching the film last night, I know I've caught the bug. The plan is to see how things go between now and the end of June, and then if things are still going well (I'm still running), then I am going to pick a half-marathon in the fall. If that goes well, then I will target something bigger for 2009. Any suggestions?

Well, it is time for bed...wish us luck!

By Bryan at 11:39 PM , in Health and Fitness - Permalink
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Handheld Hydration

What is "handheld hydration," you ask? It's a water bottle, dummy! Actually, in running circles, it is more than just a water bottle—it's a water bottle with some sort of sleeve or strap around it, for your hand to fit through. This allows a runner to carry the water bottle in their hand, without having to hold on to it.

As the distance on my long runs has increased I've found myself wishing that I had some water towards the end of my runs. In the last couple of weeks, I started taking a small Gatorade bottle with me on my long runs, but I would get tired of having to hold it throughout the run. So on Sunday, before going out for 6 miles, I stopped by our local Luke's Locker to pick up a handheld hydration system—the Quickdraw Plus, from Nathan Sports.

Overall, it was pretty good to run with. The Quickdraw Plus has a zippered pocket for storing small items (like my car key), an adjustable, and a reflective strap for a customized fit. The one downside was that my hand got pretty cold holding it for the first half of the run, as I had ice in the bottle, and had put it in the freezer for a while before my run. To help combat this, I switched hands often during the first mile, and then switched once per mile during the the rest of the run.

Have you used a hydration system while running? If so, what kind?

By Bryan at 11:42 AM , in Health and Fitness - Permalink
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Just a couple of quick items:

• Comments are enabled, though I am not finished mucking around with them.
• My Recent Runs - I've added a new page at the ol' site—My Recent Runs. It lists information about my 10 most recent runs (runs where I used my Forerunner 305). The data is pulled from MotionBased.com, and includes links to more details at Motionbased, as well as to Google Maps and Google Earth.

By Bryan at 8:29 AM , in Site Information - Permalink
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My First 20 Mile Week

I know that I recently posted about feeling beat-down, worn out, or whatever you want to call it. Today I feel good. Saturday I felt good. Yesterday I felt really good. So what happened? I don't know—perhaps it was just a matter of getting a day off to recover. Whatever it was, I am not going to complain. After all, I just completed a 10 mile weekend, and my first 20+ mile week. And I don't feel like I simply survived, I feel like a thrived.

One of the big things I've noticed through this past week's training, is improvement in my fitness level. The easy runs on Tuesday and Thursday were run at a quicker pace than I've previously run them, without a big increase in my perceived effort level. On Tuesday, I did a 3 mile run in 33:23, with an average heart rate of 151 bpm. Thursday's run was also 3 miles, this time in 32:01, and an average heart rate of 158. Now, you might argue that the increased pace came at the expense of an increased heart rate, and that it wasn't really an "easy" run, but remember that I said perceived effort—not heart rate—and this run felt pretty easy.

Sandwiched in between those two easy runs, was my speed workout—intervals. There's no getting around it—this workout was HARD. I really do need to work on slowing down during my intervals. The number of intervals increased from 5 to 6, and it really was this workout that had me feeling beat-down.

After a day of rest on Friday, Saturday brought another 4 miles of easy running. I had originally planned on going out early Saturday, before all of the rain moved in, and before we got busy with soccer and basketball games, but I was just too tired, and the rain moved in a little early. Instead, I went out in the afternoon—38.2°F, winds 10-14 mph, light rain and all. This run was also the first time that I simply headed out the door and just ran (using the Forerunner 305 for distance, of course), rather than plotting out my route beforehand. A little less than half of the 4 miles was spent on hike and bike trails, which was a nice change from the street running. Anyway, I finished the 4 miles in 47:11, with an average heart rate of 158 bpm. Considering the wind, the rain, the hills, I felt pretty good about this run--not to mention that it was one of those weird sort of perfect days to be outside running, while everyone else stayed huddled indoors.

Finally, there was my 6 mile long run yesterday, completed in 1:09:19, with an average heart rate of 152 bpm. That's an 11:33/mile easy pace, sustained over 6 miles, with a heart rate no higher than my 3 mile run on Tuesday. I feel really good about this run, and I feel like I am ready for my first race of the year—The Cowtown 5K, this coming Saturday.

By Bryan at 11:47 PM , in Health and Fitness - Permalink
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That Good Old Beat-Down Feeling

You know that feeling you get after you've been training hard? You know, that beat-down feeling? Well, I've got it. I just feel worn out today. This week has just taken its toll (and I've still got two days of training left—4 miles tomorrow, and 6 on Sunday):

• Sat: 3 mile fast run
• Sun: 5 mile long run
• Mon: Intense upper body strength training
• Tues: 3 mile run
• Wed: 6 x 1/4 Intervals (1/4 recovery, 1 mile warm up, 1 mile cool down)
• Thurs: 3 mile run

It's no wonder I am feeling so lethargic today. Good thing today is a rest day!

In addition to all of this work, we also had the Tequila and Salsa Party Saturday night, which meant too much to drink, too much to eat, and staying up too late. Of course, it was a great time, and I wouldn't have missed it (especially since it was at our house)! But its effects have lingered on throughout this week, I think, as I only lost .5 lb since last Friday. And honestly, I haven't eaten horribly, or even bad. Perhaps this is my first real plateau?

As for Hal Higdon's 5K Intermediate Training Program, I will give it another week, and see how I feel. It is a lot of work, and while I didn't expect that it would be easy, I am wondering if it's a little too much right now.

By Bryan at 2:14 PM , in Health and Fitness - Permalink
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ASP.NET MVC Framework Update

Since word of it first spread, and since seeing a demo of it while I was in Redmond back in October, I've been very excited about the ASP.NET MVC Framework. And since its initial CPT release, I've been messing around with the ASP.NET MVC Framework quite a bit. Though I did have some trouble (like getting it to run in IIS7 on Vista—never got it working, even with help from Phil Haack), I really like what I've seen, and can't wait to begin using it in production. Now, it looks like it will soon be one step closer  to being production-ready.

In a few weeks, there will be an ASP.NET MVC Mix Preview Release, which will address a number of this, as discussed by Scott Guthrie in his blog post titled ASP.NET MVC Framework Road-Map Update. Of all the goodness that he mentions, one thing stood out:

We have also factored out the URL routing infrastructure from the rest of the MVC framework with this preview, which enables us to use it for other non-MVC features in ASP.NET (including ASP.NET Dynamic Data and ASP.NET Web Forms).

As someone who uses URL Rewriting quite extensively, this is great news! I can't wait to see what I can do with the URL routing infrastructure and my existing Web Forms based applications.

By Bryan at 8:30 AM , in Developer Stuff - Permalink
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HH5K:Intermediate - Week 2 Wrap Up

Another week of the Hal Higdon Intermediate 5K Training Program has come to an end. Week 2 was a pretty decent week, and I got to add another type of run to my training—the tempo run.

The week started of easy enough with upper body weight training on Monday. There's nothing special about this workout, just 40 minutes of weight lifting, doing chest, back, shoulders, triceps and biceps in 35-40 minutes. In the training program, Monday's are marked as rest days, but I like to use them to get in weight training, so that I am not doing my runs and weight training on both Tuesday and Thursday.

Tuesday was a 3 mile run, which in this program means "easy run." I finished it in 34:45, for an 11:33/mile pace and an average heart rate of 150. During the run, I tried putting into practice some hill running techniques that I had recently read in Runner's World. The only thing of note was the weather. It wasn't too cold, with an average temperature of 43.9°F, but it was really windy, with an average wind at 17.2 mph.

Wednesday was my very first tempo run (30 minutes). Hal says that a temp run should include an easy 5-10 minutes of warm up running, followed by running at an increasingly faster pace so that by the last third, you are just a a few seconds off your 10K race pace (you can also use a 5K race pace), followed by 5-10 minutes of cool down. I really didn't think that this would be too terribly tough. I figured that I would do 5 easy minutes, using my long run pace or even a little slower, and then hammer out 20 minutes at a sub-10:00/mile pace, followed by a nice long run pace for 5 more minutes. That plan started out fine, with the first 5 minutes covering .41 mile with an average heart rate of 140. The next 20 minutes were surprisingly tough! I covered 2.1 miles in those 20 minutes, with an average heart rate of 172. I definitely started out too fast, with an early pace that was sub 9:30/mile. By the end, I was holding onto a 9:40-9:50/mile pace. The final 5 minutes covered .35 miles, and I had to mix a little walking in with slow running.

Thursday, it was back to an easy 3 mile run. Again, I focused on my form going up and down our little hills. These 3 miles were run in 32:58 with an average heart rate of 153 bpm. I tried running this one on feel, and not look at my Forerunner 305 until I finished. I was pleased to see my pace and my heart rate. I even ran reverse splits: 11:11, 11:03, and 10:42 (even with my near-spectacular face plant!).

Friday is rest day, thank goodness!

Saturday was my first "fast" run. Hal Higdon describes this run as faster than your regular runs, that if you run with a training partner, you'll probably not want to carryon a conversation, and it is okay to be out of breath. That said, I set out to run my 3 miles in under 30 minutes. Again, as with the previous run, I hit start on the Forerunner 305, and didn't look at it again until I was finished. I ended up turning in my fastest 3 miles to date at 28:33, for a 9:31 pace, with an average heart rate of 174 bpm. The bad news is that I ran out of gas by the start of mile 3. The good news is that I still finished mile 3 in under 10 minutes. The splits were 9:22/mile, 9:11/mile, and 9:58 (that last one seriously felt like 12:00/mile+).

Yesterday (Sunday) was my long run of 5 miles. After the Tequila and Salsa Party the night before, I was in no hurry to get this one done, and I didn't get to it until nearly 5 PM. The run was a 2.5 mile out and back along a greenbelt, which passed through a big city park. It was a very nice, and even relaxing run, though I was ready to walk before I had even hit the turn-around. As with my other recent runs, I hit start on the Forerunner 305, and tried not to look at it until it was time to stop. I ended up running the 5 miles in 59:12 with an average heart rate of 155 bpm. My splits were: 11:49, 11:46, 11:53, 11:53, and 11:51. Not bad for a newbie self-pacing, huh?

The week ahead brings my second interval training session, which I'm not really looking forward to, especially since it includes an extra interval since the first interval session. My Saturday run also increases from 3 miles to 4 miles, and my long run goes from 5 miles to 6 miles. This should put me over 20 miles/week for the first time. Wish me luck!

By Bryan at 12:42 PM , in Health and Fitness - Permalink
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Face Plant

Okay, so I am out on my run last night (Week 2, Day 4 of Hal Higdon's Intermediate 5K Training Program), and I'm about 1/3 of the way into the last mile, I've just crested a little hill and I'm picking up speed to cruise on down the hill, when all of a sudden my left foot catches on some uneven sidewalk.

Now understand, my right foot hadn't come forward very far yet, so all of a sudden I am launched into the air, and looking down at the ground. My first thought was "oh, crap—this is going to hurt!" My second thought was "how should I land?" I thought about putting my hands out to break my fall, putting my arms, but not putting my hands down, to avoid breaking my wrists, pretending like I was sliding headfirst into second base, and finally, I thought about trying to roll in midair and hope I somehow landed in the grass. Then, in a split second, somehow my right leg came forward enough, and under me enough (but just barely, as I was already getting close to the ground), that I was able to catch myself, at least for a step. Once I realized that I had landed on my right leg and not my face, my attention turned to getting my left leg down before my momentum put me on the ground anyway. Fortunately, I was able to get my left leg down, and after a couple of more big awkward steps, I was back to cruising down the hill.

I did a quick assessment of the situation, discovering that the little toe on my left foot sure did hurt. I also noticed a little "twinge" in my lower back and my right hip, but that quickly faded, and I finished my run. As I was doing a little cool down walk, I noticed the my toe was sore—like a seam in my sock was rubbing or something. When I got back to the house and got my shoe and sock off, sure enough, there was a blister on top of my little toe, right where my foot hit the hardest. This morning, the toe is still sore and my lower back, right above my butt is a bit sore. Good thing today is a rest day!

Notes from my run:

Easy Run of 3 Miles. I didn't look at the Forerunner 305 at all during the run. Instead, I just ran on feel. I think I did pretty good, as my average heart rate was 153 bpm, and I actually ran reverse splits (unintentionally):

3 Miles in 32:57 @ 10:58/mile. 11:11, 11:03, 10:42

By Bryan at 11:18 AM , in Health and Fitness - Permalink
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Another Day, Another Salsa

It's late...we've got a busy Saturday...I really should be getting to bed, rather than writing this blog post. But I've just got to get this salsa recipe out of my head and stored somewhere a little more permanent.

Roasted Tomato and Tomatillo Salsa

• 6 Roasted tomatillos
• 2 Roasted roma tomatoes
• 1 28 oz. can of Muir Glen Fire Roasted Tomatoes
• 1 Roasted Poblano pepper
• 1 ancho chile pepper
• 1 habanero pepper
• 1/2 shallot (minced)
• 1 bunch cilantro
• a few cloves of roasted garlic
• salt
• white vinegar

Maybe someday I'll come back and tell you how I took all of these ingredients and turned them into this salsa:

By Bryan at 2:15 AM , in Eats and Drinks - Permalink
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