Marathon Training Week 2

The ear felt much better by Monday and I was able to pretty much return to normal.
Monday: Ran 3 miles at lunch, it was much harder than expected for two reason's 1) still sore from wakeboarding 2) Hot! For Flagstaff anyway it was like over 80.
Tuesday: Yoga, felt really good to stretch out all the sore muscles. Very Zen.
Wednesday: Ran intervals in the morning 2x1600m with 800m easy jog recovery. Also a 1/2 mile warm up and cool down. Felt really good, it's always nice to run fast but also a bit painful.
Thursday: Lifted and ran 2.5 miles. Always hard to run on treamill, but got into a groove after a while.
Friday: Bike to work and lift at lunch but no bike home because I wrecked my bike on the way in. Got a little scratched up but jacked up my front wheel. I'll post more about that later.
Saturday: 5K race! I've decided 5k's are the hardest. For longer races my mentality is just to keep going, for this race it's keep going fast the whole race and that can get painful. Like most races it was all a blurr. I was happy with the results. I ran 22:32 which was good enough for 25/173 overall and 4/14 for my division. That's a PR for me which was my original goal. I even ran under 23 which was my secondary goal so I can't complain. I would still like to train specifically for this distance some time and see how fast I can go, but that won't happen until at least next year. Here are some pictures Paige got of the race.

WTF follow up

Well, Thanks Joel for playing. I did actually LOL when I read that (I guess I'm not a "real man" then). Drew thought I had gone crazy I was cracking up so hard and I couldn't explain to him why. For that Joel is the honorary winner of the unofficial contest I was holding for the best response. Congrats!

For the record that picture is Mr. Jason Davis demonstrating the use of the nasal ranger field olfactometer. No I'm not making that up, it's called a nasal ranger. I guess people use it to make sure things aren't too stinky like factories, land fills, sewage treatment plants, etc. I suppose there is some way of quantifying the smell, otherwise they just rely on Mr. Jason Davis to make a judgement call. If he passes out, it's too stinky; otherwise you're good.

Marathon training week 1

I officially kicked off the marathon training this week. On monday I woke up and rode my bike about 9 miles to work. Then at lunch I ran 3 miles, then rode my bike home again. My legs were pretty tired after all that. On Tuesday I went to yoga. On Wednesday I woke up early and did a three mile tempo run. I was surprised that I did 3 miles in under 24 minutes. I've got a 5k coming up next week so it looks like setting a PR shouldn't be too much of a challenge. On Thursday I did some lifting and ran an easy 2 miles. Friday I got a surprise call from the Bishop to go waterskiing with him. I was really excited because I haven't been wakeboarding for a really long time. It was a blast to get back out there. It took some time to get back into the groove, but soon I was throwing some of my old tricks. On my last run, I tried something I knew I coudln't pull off but tried anyway because I was "done". I landed ear first into the water (not intentionally although that would be a really cool trick) and re-ruptured by tympanic membrane (eardrum). I have done this before as a teenager which resulted in the most painful three days of my life because I let the infection go untreated which swelled my ear canal shut. This as you might imagine is not conducive to productive marathon training. But, I didn't let it interfere with my long run on Saturday. I clocked a really slow six miles. It was really difficult, not only because of the ear but I am also sore from head to toe.
I got put on antibiotics and will hopefully avoid the really painful stuff I experienced with my last ear issue. If not, this weeks training will be severly cut down (non-existent). I have a 5k scheduled on Saturday, if my ear proves difficult I'll cancel and find another at a better time. And the next time I go wakeboarding I'll wear earplugs.

My Eardrum

WTF is this?

I stumbled upon this image while doing some "research" at work.

I'd like to hear your ideas on what this is and what it's used for and more importantly what might be going through this dudes head at the time of this picure.

I've been thinking

You know, A marathon is a long way. I've been talking with other runners who are doing very crazy distances (50 milers, 6 day stage race doing 14-25 miles per day, etc.) so my little marathon has seemed very managable. Just lately I've been thinking "dang that's far". Here are a few ways to put it into perspective:
26.2 miles
138336 feet
about 4 hours or 240 min. of running
In 4 hours I can drive to Las Vegas
It's like running from my parents to Jordanelle resevoir or somewhere in Sandy.
Or from my house to Munds Park.
What am I getting myself into?