Pieces of the puzzle

I recently switched desktop computers and currently have zero access to my photo archives, so sadly this post is straight up text.  No sunsets, no sunrises, no pretty pictures of any kind.  But I'll have my network up soon and the photos will be back!  And I don't have Word installed... so watch out for grammar problems and keep them to yourself.  I ain't talk so good when the machine ain't checkin' my werds.


Turning 30

I’m going to turn thirty soon; i roughly a month and a half.  It’s a bummer.  But the biggest bummer isn’t my age or how I feel about said age... it’s my new racing category.  I’m in a faster racing age group; it sucks.  My last half marathon, the one that I placed first in my age group, I wouldn’t have even placed in for 30-34.  I’d have been chumped.  So now I need to get faster.  And I will.  Because even though I'm turning 30 I'm still progressively getting more fit than I've ever been.  By the time I'm 40 the world had better watch out.  I'll bring sexy back.  I'll bring it back and jam it in people's faces.  K'pow!

Physiology

I’ve been running long for about three years.  My body’s adapted to endurance racing.  Forget training and diet and all that jazz.  My body has adapted on the physiological level.  I can chug my body along at a pretty decent pace far more efficiently than I could when I started years ago.  I can hold a said pace with much less taxation on my heart, leaving me the room to crank my heart up to it's old standby rate while traveling faster.

Range of motion

The body is a crazy thing.  All your pieces work together to make you move.  My body is pretty use to running and moving for long periods of time.  But I have a piece that doesn't work right- my right big toe.  Yep.  My downfall in running all comes down to the inflexibility of my big toe.  Weird right?  I wont go into detail of the problem or how I'm going to solve it, but it's pretty interesting stuff.

New Toys

I recently purchased an inversion table.  It's pretty great.  It locks at many positions other than completely upside down... so I use it to pitch myself slightly backwards after a long run and help my blood make its rounds.

I'm in the market for a new GPS watch.  I want to have a heart rate monitor at all times during my "hundo" and I need to own a second training watch to swap out at exchange points during the race.  I'm completely irritated with watches on the market and feel like I'm getting ripped off for the technology that exists.  I hate Garmin.  I said it, I hate them.  I think I'll end up with a Suunto.  I could go into great technical detail on my rant, but I wont.

It doesn't count as toys but I have a new training trick.  It's a secret;;I think it's pretty interesting.  Sciencey people can question me for fun, but I know it'll be a fact that likely stays with myself.

My Brain

The ace up my sleeve is my brain.  It thinks thinky thoughts.  All it's mush and contours are filled with running knowledge and tricks of the trade.  I may start coaching soon to dump some of that knowledge somewhere.  But for now the knowledge remains free and available.  But someday...

More-so my brain knows what my body can do.  It's seen how I can push my body and how far it can go.  It knows when to tell my body to stop whining because there's still plenty of gas in the tank.  This, to me, is the most important trait I've learned.  I can check in with my body during a race and gather actual feedback, rather than just "I don't want to be doing this anymore."  In addition to this my brain knows that the activities I do are possible out of determination and training, but there's more to that.  My brain accepts that at anytime my body could break.  I could get injured, or be injured, and that's a reality I must accept.  I have future goals for racing and things I'd like to accomplish, but I know that can change at any point.  It's just reality.

My brain has heard words of concern about the toll I'm placing on my body.  No one got anywhere in life whilst hanging in the kiddy pool.  I'm aware of the demand and impact I throw on my body.  If I make it to 60 and my joints ache with every step I'll be aching with a smile.  Those aches and pains will have been earned.  It's like a scar.  Some scars have bad memories, but some come with great ones.



Until next time... with pretty pictures.  I had one on my desktop from my trip to Colorado.  I cant have a post without any pictures... relevant of not.

Sunrise in Wyoming.

Welcome to signing up for an Ultramarathon.

I’ve signed up to travel 100 miles on my feet in under 34 hours.  This is another new step in the whacky world of Justin.  Come September I’m going to beast it.  There are reasons I’m single, I accept this, I’m crazy.  I’m coo coo for coco puffs.  If coco puffs is synonymous for needing to create a savings fund for my future titanium knee caps.  I’m going to be half terminator.  Thumb up…  Get it?

Full disclosure, the pictures?  They don't have anything to do with this.  But people like pictures.

There are things about my body I’ve learned to accept.  You know how kids want to go out and play?  But it’s raining.  The rain is pouring down and just spoiling everyone’s party.  My abs are my children.  They want to play.  The rain is my horrible and atrocious diet.  My abs want to come out and play, but I keep dumping showers of pizza, burgers, and candy bars on their parade.  I’m a rain storm pouring on my own parade.  Such is life.

So it’s time to step up my game.  Last year I had a female to keep me on track with my biking and swimming and a friend that happened to be a female (and her awesome running friends, aka my friends) to keep me on track with running.  This year I need to stick hard to my own flight plan.  I need to be better at the diet part of training.  I need to log 30-50 miles a week and boost that to here and there 70’s closer to race season.  I have a plan.  I may post it eventually just to give an insider’s view to the experience.  I have a calendar… with dates… distances…  And I plan to somewhat stick to it.  One day a week is dedicated to long runs on pavement and another day each week is dedicated to 10+ miles of trail running.  My wiggle room is that I can substitute distance on trail for time at a mile to ten minute ratio: a planned 12 miles run can be settled for 2 hours because trail running can be a different beast.  I need to log between an hour to two hours running before meeting up with my (extremely awesome and just all out incredible ladies I run with) group on Saturday mornings.  Because that’s my favorite run of the week.  And if I can dedicate the distance before meeting up with them I can for sure finish with them.

I’m going to run a marathon in July and shoot for a Boston time.  Mixing two trainings is probably not a common plan, but I’m going to shoot for the moon.  Yep.

I bought a vest.  It holds a 2 liter bladder and two water bottles.  It’s pretty great.  I have several pairs of new shoes.  I’m going to spend the time over the next months narrowing down which shoes I want to race in and what food I want to carry.  It’s a new adventure and I’m going to discover the nooks and crannies of the adventure.

I have a job that really works great with my crazy races.  A normal work week leaves me with a three day weekend.  I can do two long runs a week with a day’s active recovery in between.  Really, everything in life is in a great spot for tackling adventures head on.  I’m looking forward to exploring this new whacky world.  My blog may get updates here and there, but really it’s hard to gauge where the interest lies without feedback.  I’m just going to run a bunch, haha.

That’s it.  That’s my rambling.  Hope it was enjoyable.