After our tempo workout yesterday, Nathan and I met at the start of Old Natchez Trace this morning for a scheduled 70-minute easy paced run. The temperature break we got yesterday was gone today and the humidity was through the roof with a dew point of 74º. This made it quite a bit harder to breath, especially in the early minutes of the run.

We ended up running the entire length of Old Natchez out-and-back, on what turned out to be a steady progression effort. Every mile split was faster than the previous except for one…

At the start of the route my legs felt a little heavy from the workout yesterday morning and doing P90X Legs and Back with Olivia last night. However, this faded pretty quickly and left me feeling really good. Because of this our pace kept getting faster and faster, and we finished with a 7:06 final mile.

In total we finished 8.45-miles in 70 minutes with an average pace of 8:18 per mile. Also for the month I completed 221-miles, which is my best mileage month ever by almost 9-miles. This makes 4 out of the 7 months in 2012 with at least 200-miles. Before 2012, I had only eclipsed 200 miles one time. Yeah Baby!

With this run I’ve now completed exactly 1,400-miles for the year, which is 503-miles ahead of where I was on the same date last year.

Beast Mode…ON! Baby!

P.S. – Nathan just finished 170-miles for July, which is his biggest month by approximately 35-Miles. Glad to have someone to share all those miles with me. Nice work my friend!

“Reverence for the Presence of God” (Ecclesiastes 5:1-7) – Audio recording of my Sunday evening sermon at Maple Hill Church of Christ in Lebanon, TN on July 8, 2012.

Looking at the seriousness of approaching God, and how we will do it if we truly have the proper reverence for Him.

Copy of the Handout referenced in the sermon

Ecclesiastes 5:1-7 (ESV)

¹ Guard your steps when you go to the house of God. To draw near to listen is better than to offer the sacrifice of fools, for they do not know that they are doing evil. ² Be not rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God, for God is in heaven and you are on earth. Therefore let your words be few. ³ For a dream comes with much business, and a fool’s voice with many words.

⁴ When you vow a vow to God, do not delay paying it, for he has no pleasure in fools. Pay what you vow. ⁵ It is better that you should not vow than that you should vow and not pay. ⁶ Let not your mouth lead you into sin, and do not say before the messenger that it was a mistake. Why should God be angry at your voice and destroy the work of your hands? ⁷ For when dreams increase and words grow many, there is vanity; but God is the one you must fear.

A few weeks ago my wife’s car was hit in the parking lot at Publix supermarket, and since last Tuesday it has been in the body shop getting repairs. Well, in somewhat related news, just a few minutes ago I was questioned by an FBI Task Force officer who came to our house investigating a robbery in southern Kentucky this morning.

Apparently the robber drove a car that was the exact same make, model, and color as my wife’s car. Also they were able to get the last two characters from the license plate, and they matched her car as well. While the accident seemed like such a hassle at the time, it was pretty nice to be able to tell the officer that the car had been in the shop since last Tuesday and give him the information on how to confirm it.

While the officer was very nice, I’ve never been questioned by the FBI before (and hope I never am again), and I’ll have to say it was quite unnerving. Even now I still feel a bit unsettled by the whole thing.

♫ I’m BAAAAAAAAACK! I’m Back in the Saddle Again! ♫

When I got today’s tempo workout from John last night, I knew he was setting me up for success, and figured I would feel better than I did during my tempo workout last Monday. However, I had no idea I would feel FANTASTIC! Last week was tough with an abysmal workout on Monday and a crash and burn during my long run on Saturday. All of that left me feeling a bit nervous for the effort this morning.

Here’s what was on the schedule…

• 30-minutes easy pace
• 6 x 4 min at 6:50 to 7:00 pace with 90 second active recovery
• 30-minutes easy pace

In addition to this being a shorter and slower workout than last week, we also got a little break in the temperatures this morning. All of this added up to getting a little bit of my confidence back.

Nathan and I again met at the Edwin Warner Park Nature Center, and completed our first 30 minutes at a very chill 8:46 pace. We started the tempo repeats on the Harpeth River Greenway, and I felt like myself again. With every interval the biggest thing I had to fight was going too fast. Honestly, this was a battle that I lost on all but two of the six repeats (just barely). My legs and energy felt great from the first interval to the last. Also, since this is my schedule and not Nathan’s, he is not restricted to running my pace, and frequently put a little distance on me during the repeats. As I’ve said before, he is running stronger right now than I’ve ever seen him run.

Once we finished the intervals, my legs still had a bit of jump in them, and it was hard to get geared down during the final 30 minutes. Because of that we ended up with a 7:50 pace for the last segment, but this felt extremely comfortable.

In total we ran just over 93 minutes and completed 11.83-miles at an average pace of 7:54 per mile. Glad to be back in saddle again!

Beast Mode…ON!

The Star Wars cast sings Call Me Maybe by Carly Rae Jepsen! – Someone has entirely too much time on their hands, but this is hysterical.

I know this has been blowing up on the net and Twitter since the Detroit Free Press claimed to have received an email from her coach, Kevin Hanson, saying that Desiree Davila had withdrawn due to her lingering hip injury…

Shortly after that story broke, Desi went to Twitter with this…

Not sure exactly what is going on, but the Free Press has now retracted the story….

Cool to see her getting support from her U.S. teammates…

Also, the Free Press is getting a lot of heat for running the story…

Regardless of what happened, I really hope Desi gets to race. She is absolutely my favorite runner in the 2012 Olympic Games. Go Desi!!

Update: Joe Battaglia with NBC just posted an article, which provides further clarification. Looks like Desi and Kevin are on a different page.

Update #2: Looks more and more like the email did indeed go out from Kevin to the Detroit Free Press, but obviously Desi was not OK with it…

Update #3: More confirmation that Desi has not withdrawn from the Marathon. This tweet from her Olympic roommate and college teammate Amy Hastings…

Update #4: The following has been posted on the Hansons Brooks Original Distance Project Facebook Page…

Sorry for the misunderstanding earlier. Desi was frustrated with the fact that she is a long way from 100% both fitness wise and health. She had decided that it was probably best to pull out of the Marathon. After discussing her options with the Olympic coaches and medical staff, they convinced her that she deserves the entire experience and that means giving herself every chance to make it to the starting line.

One of the most intriguing things about the 2012 Olympic Marathon in London is the course, which is routed to include many iconic London sights. It is comprised of four loops. The first one is 2.2-miles and is where the race begins. Loops 2, 3, and 4 are basically a large, twisted, 8-mile figure eight (same loop repeated three times).

Check out some of the stats about the course: 

• The course contains 111 turns
• The longest straightaway is 1/2-mile
• There are three sections of the larger loop which contain a non-paved running surface made out of either cobblestone or marble.

All of this makes me wonder if anyone will be able to go super-low with the turns and varied surfaces. However, no one thought it would be possible to go low in 2008 at Beijing due to the hot and humid conditions, but Sammy Wanjiru of Kenya set an Olympic record with a time of 2:06:32. Should be fun to watch!

London 2012 Olympic Marathon: Paula Radcliffe Ruled Out

I don’t usually post stuff like this, but it really made me laugh….

Friday:

After a super-hot track workout last night, it was nice to just have a very chill-paced run through the streets of Bellevue with Nathan and Josh. The schedule called for 40-minutes at easy pace with 6 x 100m stride outs.

We met at the Bellevue United Methodist Church parking lot, and I ran in my Saucony Hattoris. After about 30-minutes we took a little detour down a just completed new section of the Harpeth River Greenway. We didn’t have much time to explore, but it was exciting to see this new running space.

At the end we did our strides in the parking lot, and other than one stride out, Nathan and Josh blew past me every time. Even with this I still felt good throughout the run and the strides. In total we finished just under 5.2-miles with an average pace of 8:59 per mile.

Saturday:

Today’s schedule called for a 16-mile long run at easy pace. Our group had a marathon interval workout planned, but John wanted me to stick to the easy run since I had struggled some this week. However, I did run in the same location as the group so that we would occasionally cross paths.

Well, today’s effort can easily be summed up in three parts:

1. Felt relatively great during the first 12 miles, maintaining a smooth 8:30ish pace.
2. Felt awful for miles 13 and 14, and dropped to a 9:00ish pace. 
3. Walked most of the final 1.5 miles back to my car

The thing about the late run fail today is that it was predominately self-inflicted. It is true that the conditions were nasty, as they have been recently, with high temps, high humidity, and full sun throughout. However, I did absolutely nothing else to help myself  finish the run strong. This includes:

• Getting less than 5 hours of sleep last night (out late at the Sounds game)
• Not eating anything before the run, and only drinking about 12 oz of Gatorade.
• Not drinking enough fluid during the run, only stopping at miles 3 and 12.
• Not taking a gel during the run, and only having sports drink at the end of mile 3.

Looking back on this, I have no idea what I was thinking. The lack of sleep was mostly unavoidable, but everything else should have been a no-brainer with today’s schedule and conditions. I really hate carrying fluid, and I just thought I would be able to route my run in such a way as to make use of the water fountains throughout Edwin Warner Park. However, even if I had made that happen, it still doesn’t explain why I didn’t at least carry a gel with me.

Anyway, I started out from the Edwin Warner Nature Center, about 20-minutes ahead of when the group was starting, and ran a 3-mile loop on the Harpeth River Greenway back to the Nature Center. The group was just starting their warmup when I got back, but I stopped and got some Gatorade anyway, before heading back onto the greenway. I caught up with them at their staging area, and ran part of their first interval with them, but at an easy pace. When they turned to head back to the staging area I kept going to the end of the greenway and out onto Harpeth Bend Road.

During our run on Friday, Nathan, Josh and I had noticed the city had completed a new section of the Harpeth River Greenway with an entrance on Harpeth Bend Road. We were not able to run the full distance of it on Friday, so I thought this would be a good opportunity today to see how far it went. The only problem was there was no access to fluid throughout this area. 

On a side note, the Harpeth River Greenway is now completed in three different sections, but none of them are connected. The first starts near the Edwin Warner Nature Center, and is approximately 2-miles long. This new section is about a mile down Harpeth Bend Road past the end of the first section, and is approximately 1.25-miles long. The final section is on the other side of Old Harding Road, about 1-mile from the end of the second section, and is approximately 1-mile long. It will be really nice once all of these are connected into one continuous greenway.

Anyway, because of my little detour to explore the new section of greenway, I was not able to get back to water until I had completed almost 12.5-miles. As mentioned above I had felt relatively good throughout the first 12-miles, but then all-of-a-sudden I just hit a wall. I stopped at a water spicket in one of the picnic areas of Edwin Warner, and stuck my head completely under it with the water turned on. After this point every step felt like the “survivor shuffle” that is frequently employed at the end of a marathon.

My pace didn’t drop off too drastically, but I felt awful. I saw some of the folks from our group as I was in the middle of mile-14, and by this point I was starting to feel nauseated. Once I completed 14-miles I stopped for a minute and took inventory. On Thursday night, in response to my poor workout on Monday, John had talked to me about listening to my body and knowing when it was time to just shut things down. Well, I really felt like this was one of those times because of how bad I felt.

I walked up a hill for about a 1/4-mile and then attempted an easy run again once I was going downhill. This lasted just over 3/10-mile before I gave it up for good and walked the rest of the way back to my car. When I got back I was pretty dejected, but this quickly turned into anger at myself. I know that my problems today are NOT due to over-training or significant fatigue, but are simply because I was NOT SMART! I’ve got to take this as a learning experience and then move on.

In total I finished just over 14.3-miles with an average pace of 8:40 per mile. Also, for the week I completed just under 55-miles, which makes three consecutive weeks with 50+ training miles. My monthly total for July is just over 201 miles with two training days remaining.

Beast Mode….Sputtering, Sputtering, Sputtering, ON!

Yesterday, Competitor.com posted an article on their blog titled The Most Expensive Running Gear, which contained five items that are quite pricey. One particular item stood out to me and is pictured below…

Oakley Elite C Six Sunglasses, $4,000

I was immediately curious when I saw these sunglasses….How could they possibly be $4,000? Are they made out of platinum? Do they contain some type of sophisticated electronics? Do they have a GPS built in? However, what I found on Oakley’s website is that it simply has to do with the complexity of their construction. They are made from 40-layers of pure carbon fiber, which is supposedly stronger than high tinsel steel. While this sounds cool, it certainly doesn’t sound like anything that would make someone be willing to pay $4,000 for a pair of sunglasses.

I first saw this when I was at lunch with a few guys from the office. One of them asked the question….Is there anything that a pair of sunglasses could do that would compel You to pay $4,000 for them? I had a hard time coming up with an answer, other than things which are ludicrous like “running lots faster” or “preventing injury.”

How about you….Is there anything that a pair of sunglasses could do that would compel You to pay $4,000 for them?

That’s a great looking shoe! Is it cheaper than the Kinvara? What colors will be available? I guess I could just Google it. 🙂

MSRP will be $90 » Colors for Men include:

• Black/Red/Citron
• Citron/Blue
• Grey/Orange
• White/Black/Red

You can see two of these in one of my previous posts » HERE

Davila Will Make Marathon Decision Soon

Running Warehouse – Spring 2013 Preview – Saucony Virrata

This is a new training shoe from Saucony that I’m seriously looking forward to. Only 6.5 ounces and 0-drop from heel to toe. I have been running in the Kinvara for the past two years, but am definitely going to give this one a try when it comes out next spring.

At the beginning of tonight’s track workout it was 94º with a heat index of 101º. That makes two consecutive weeks of track workouts with a heat index greater than 100º (it was 106º last Thursday), and also makes me really ready for fall!

Because of the conditions, I generally felt pretty blah during the warmup, but thankfully started feeling a lot better during the workout. Here’s a rundown of the evening…

• 3-Mile Warmup
• 6 x 100m Stride Outs
• 800m f (300m recovery)
• 400m f (200m recovery)
• 600m f (600m recovery)
• 800m Straights and Curves (400m recovery)
• 2 x 400m f (30 second recovery)
• .75-Mile Cool Down

The original workout sent by Jim Spivey had an additional 1600m (fgfg) between the 600m and the 800m straights and curves. However, John made some modifications due to the heat and high humidity. Overall I ran pretty conservative again tonight, but felt really good throughout. My splits were right in line with what I was shooting for, and stayed pretty consistent. By far the hardest interval for me was the first 800m, but I continued to feel better from there. I did have a little twinge in my right quad tonight that I’d never felt before, but this didn’t have any effect on my stride and got better throughout.

After a couple of weeks running with Nick, I was back to running by myself, a distant second to our short-distance specialist Paul. There were a couple of times where Aine hung just a few strides behind me, and I told her after the workout that I am really impressed with her progress this summer. She is going to be flying in the fall when the temperatures drop.

In total I finished 7.2-miles with warmup and cool down at an average pace of 8:03 per mile. Very pleased with tonight’s workout, especially considering the conditions.

Beast Mode…ON!

Instagram filter used: Lo-fi

View in Instagram ⇒

Today Nathan and I started our run from the small gravel parking lot next to the Steeplechase in Percy Warner Park. We used to start here a LOT, but it has been quite a while since it has come up in our rotation. I picked this location for two reasons: (1) It has been very warm and sunny this week (even early in the morning) and the routes out of this lot are pretty shaded. (2) The route we took today is fairly hilly, and I just felt like running some hills for today’s easy run.

After starting across from the Steeplechase we took the old abandoned road near the 5-mile marker on the Main Drive in Percy Warner over onto the Main Drive in Edwin Warner. The abandoned road is an interesting place to run. It is kinda like a road/trail hybrid with lots of overgrowth and sections missing that were washed away by the 2010 flood. Also, while we run in Edwin Warner a LOT, we don’t typically run on the Main Drive there, so it was a nice change of pace. Near the end of the run we took the Harpeth River Greenway to the Edwin Warner Nature Center, and then hopped on the Candy-Cane connector trail back into Percy Warner before heading to the cars.

The schedule called for 75-minutes easy, and we kept the pace very, very chill throughout. I’m guessing the pace would have been quite a bit faster on a flat surface, but our route had over 1,400 ft of cumulative elevation gain in just over 8-miles, and included several different surfaces as mentioned above.

Overall I felt fantastic this morning, especially on the climbs. I actually felt better on the climbs today than I did on the one, steep downhill during miles 3 and 4. The heat and humidity were tough, but this didn’t seem to affect my energy level too much.

In total we finished just over 8.25-miles with an average pace of 9:22 per mile. For me that makes 28.2-miles since Monday, and I’m pretty sure that Nathan is well over 29. Even with my poor showing on Monday, this is still turning out to be a pretty good running week.

Beast Mode…ON!

In many cases there is benefit to looking to the past when trying to improve for the future, but today my focus was on staying in the present, and trying to put yesterday’s poor workout completely behind me.

As has become the norm for a Tuesday, today’s scheduled called for 50 minutes at easy pace with 6 x 100m stride outs at the end. John had told me yesterday to feel free to modify the plan as necessary if my legs felt trashed this morning, so I just decided to take it as I went. The heat and humidity are still really nasty in Nashville right now. Even at 6am it was almost 80º with humidity at 90%.

Nathan and I met at the main gates of Percy Warner Park, and did a route through the streets of Belle Meade. Overall I felt really good today, and not significantly different than any other Tuesday morning run after a hard Monday workout. Our first two miles were over 9:00min pace, and then we settled into a nice 8:40ish pace for the remainder of the 50 minutes.

When we got back to the main gates we did our 6 x 100m stride outs back and forth on the main drive. I approached these pretty tentatively after yesterday’s troubles, but ended up feeling fantastic running fast. I couldn’t quite keep up with Nathan, but still finished with a 5:30 average pace for the strides.

In total we completed just over 6.3-miles with an average pace of 8:43 per miles. Good confidence boost after feeling dead yesterday.

Beast Mode…ON!

I’ve been wondering when this day would come, and today it happened. John broke me!

In all seriousness, I’ve been feeling great throughout this summer, and all-the-while John has slowly been increasing the intensity of the workouts. It seemed inevitable that at some point things would hit a bit of a wall. Well, last night he sent me the following workout for today:

• 30-minutes easy warmup
• 4 x 6-minutes at 6:20 to 6:30 pace with 1-minute active recoveries in-between
• 5-minutes easy recovery
• 3 x 6-minutes at 6:20 to 6:30 pace with 1-minute active recoveries in-between
• 30-minutes easy cool down

I happened to be sitting next to Nathan when this came in, and he looked at me like I had to be joking when I read it off to him. I knew this workout would be pushing the limits of my capabilities, but kept telling myself “You’ve Got This!”

Nathan and I met at the Edwin Warner Park Nature Center around 5:30am this morning, and ran our 30-minute warmup in the park and on the Harpeth River Greenway. The humidity was still very high like it was on Saturday, but this morning there were no clouds to provide any relief from the sun. During the warmup I felt pretty good, and had no indication that anything was different than previous weeks.

For the intervals we ran out-and-back on the Harpeth River Greenway, and there was good news and bad news. The good news is that I successfully hit the target range during the first 6-minute repeat, with a 6:29 average pace. The bad news is that I had a really hard time running that fast during the first repeat, and it was the last time I would finish an interval in the target range (by a wide margin).

Pretty early on during the second repeat the wheels completely fell off the bus, and I had a really hard time keeping up with Nathan (who looked very strong). I finished the second repeat with a 6:46 average pace, and it just kept going downhill from there. By number three I couldn’t keep the pace below 7min pace and finished with a 7:11 average. For number four it dropped even further to a 7:27 average.

It felt like an out-of-body experience compared to the way things have been going lately. I had absolutely nothing in the tank, and it was demoralizing to know that I still had so much left to go. I wanted to run fast, but just couldn’t get my body to go. I resigned myself to the fact that my “tempo” intervals were not going to be very tempo today, and ran the rest by feel.

Nathan and I met back up for the 5-minute recovery, and then kept trudging on for the second set of intervals. For number five my pace dropped to an 8:02 average pace. For number six it dropped to 8:37. For the last one it actually improved a bit to 8:15. I don’t think he hit the target on all of them, but overall Nathan fared much better than I did throughout. I told him later that I thought he was running as strong as I’ve ever seen him run.

During the 30-minute cool down, I slowly started feeling better, but still desperately wanted the run to be over. Nathan jokingly said that I would now have to admit that I’m at least partly human and not all machine. I definitely felt all human today, and every bit of my almost 38-years. I’m trying not to be discouraged, but today was humbling after feeling so good this summer.

However, if I look at it practically, my good days have FAR outweighed my bad days this summer, which is a big change from last year. Also, I just ran 16-miles on Saturday in nasty humidity, and then turned around today and tried to run again in nasty humidity for almost 2-hours with 40+ minutes of tempo intervals. It doesn’t take a genius to know why I didn’t have much gas in the tank.

In total I finished just over 13.5-miles with an average pace of 8:41 per mile. This was almost a mile less than what Nathan got, because of his much faster pace on the repeats. On a brighter note, one cool thing about this morning’s run was seeing at least eight deer running around in the field behind Ensworth High School while doing the intervals.

Well…tomorrow is a new day, and I’m intent on putting this run behind me and continuing to move forward!

Beast Mode….Flickering….Flickering….Flickering….ON!

Friday:

After completing last night’s track workout with a 106° heat index, I ended up felling pretty tired throughout the run this morning. Nathan, Josh, and I met at Bellevue Church of Christ for a 45-minute recovery run through the streets of Bellevue, and as usual for Friday I did this run in my Saucony Hattoris.

I trudged through the first 30-minutes with Josh and Nathan, but decided to fall back for the final 15 as they picked up the pace a bit. Once I caught up to them at the end we did 6 x 100m stride outs in the church parking lot. As has been the case lately, Nathan and Josh blew past me like I was sitting still. Even though I was tired today, I was pleased that my legs didn’t have much residual soreness from the track workout last night.

In total I completed just under 5.25-miles with the strides, at an average pace of 9:09 per mile.

Saturday:

This morning our group joined the Nashville Striders for their “Bongo to Bongo” training run. This is a 14-mile route that starts at Bongo Java in East Nashville, heads toward Bongo Java near Belmont University, and completes a loop in the Belmont area (that was previously part of the Country Music Marathon course) before heading back.

The run was scheduled to start at 6:30am, but since most of this route is exposed with no shade, Dan suggested that we start earlier at 6:00am. There were several from our group that got there early, and I ended up running most of the route with Dan and Mary. My schedule called for 16-miles easy today, so I just planned on running a couple extra at the end.

Fortunately we ended up with a good amount of cloud cover, so the sun was never an issue. However the humidity was over 90% throughout the run, which made things tough. For the first four miles of the run I just flat-out felt tired like I did on Friday. It seemed like Dan and Mary were dragging me along. We started off fairly conservative with a first mile of 9:35, but the pace quickly dropped down into the mid-to-low 8:00s through the next three miles.

As we were running uphill through Music Row during mile five I started thinking about just dropping back and letting them go on ahead. At the same time I remembered something that Saucony posted on their Facebook page this week. It said “Never make a decision on an uphill.”

With that in mind, I decided to wait on making the decision to drop back until we crested the hill. When we got to the top I started feeling a lot better, and then I kept feeling better throughout mile six, and fell into a great rhythm. Just before we reached the normal turnaround for the route, Dan asked if we minded doing an extra loop to add a little distance. Since I needed two additional miles anyway, this sounded a lot better than doing them at the end.

The loop he took us on was completely new to me, but I really enjoyed it. When we got back to Belmont Boulevard we ran into some other members of our group who had started later along with the rest of the runners from the Nashville Striders. For miles two through 13 our splits all fell within a range of 8:38 to 7:59 per mile, with the majority being in the mid to lower part of the range.

For miles 14 and 15, we intentionally slowed the pace a bit and ran back toward Bongo East with Amaya from our group. During mile 16 up Woodland Street I picked the pace back up a bit to see how things would feel on tired legs. Overall I still felt great, and I only needed about 1/2-mile to complete my scheduled 16 when I got back to Bongo East. In total I finished just over 16-miles with an average pace of 8:24 per mile.

For the week I completed 54 total miles, which is the third time out of the past six weeks that I’ve crossed the 50-mile mark. Also this week I passed 1,300 total miles for the year, which is 493-miles ahead of where I was at the same point last year.

Beast Mode….ON!