It’s Saturday, the day for some running distance. We’re on the zig zag ratchet of training, increasing miles on last Saturday to 8, dropping today to 6, and then notching up next week to 10.

We are at our cabin this weekend in lovely Strawberry, Arizona, at 6000 feet elevation. My distance route today is familair, running west on Fossil Creek Road through town, some gentle dips and rises until the pavement ends, where to road bends around the end of the vally, bends back on itself again, and then rises sharply. This last hill is the “fun” part, and its about 3/4 the way to the top (a few houses past the Llama Ranch) that is my turn around point.

I’m feeling better on this run than last time I did it, maybe 6 weks agi, still going slowly as we are told to do, plus accounting for the altitude change from Phoenix. Some of the trees here, not the native pines, buit ones planted at homes, are hinting at autumn colors (our aspen are shading yellow towards their fall glory). I passed two horses, unattended, who were munching grass and flowers growing in the road side culvert.

But I must admit I was not all too pleased with the new running shoes- after about 3 miles, my feet started to tingle all over, and I had to take a 2 minute walk break just to let them relax. It seemed more problematic on the gravel forest road than going on the edge of the paved street. I may try the inserts I used in my old shoes, but this is not good for longer runs.

But the payoff onn getting back is great.. I grab an apple fresh off our tree, and plop in the hot tub with a cool beer to relax. This is the life!

Did you know... Tommy Lee, of heavy metal band Motley Crue is diabetic.... rock on! (from Diabetes Health Magazine)
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Out again for another 40 minute moderate paced run. Compared to Tuesday, I was about 100 yards short of my 20 minute turn around point (loafing a bit on the first mile), but turned up the speed so I finished just 3 second under 40 minutes, so better time than 2 days ago.

I should be at the Elite racing event tonight, which is a kickoff event for the PF Changs Marathon, a practice run featuring Frank Shorter as the pace dude. But I have a higher commitment for a family birthday didder, so sorry Team-D, I cannot be there.

I remember last year when I was just starting my first real training, I felt like I only had one speed of running- the “Oh My Gawd I Wish I Was Doing Anything Else Thank Running” speed. This was before the track workouts with Team-D and really before running any real events like the New Times 10k and the Half Marathon itself. The track workouts really focusses on dialing in the runs at different paces and intensities, and affter many miles have passed by, you slowly get a better sense of, “Hey this is a swift 10k pace” or “better notch it up to that 5k pace”.

Of course, after some layoffs from running, this gets rusty, and I find myself back in the one gear mode. But after some more outings, the old pace-ometer comes back.

I barely noticed, but at 6:00 AM, with the sun just cracking red over the horizon, it was actually somewhat cool out there, like the Phoenix summer has some big cracks in it. Elsewhere in the country, people are likely already wearing sweaters and coats.

I am sporting some new running shoes, finally. I went to Performace Footwear in Tempe — one of their reps hgad given an overview on shoes and gear for Team D a few weeks back, and I was interested in their footstrike analysis for the shoe fit. You run on a treadmill and they have a DV camera pointed right at the back of your heels, and after a minute or so on the tread, they place back the video in frame stops, so they can analyze your foot motion and determine the family of shoes the would be best fit.

This was certainly better then the eyeball at Sports Authority wall of shoes method I used last year, thought I had no shoe problems beyond needing some extra sole cushions. My foot strike analysis shoed I had a need for a shoe in the “stability” category, as I had a little bit of ankle bend after my heels hit the ground. it was rather eerie to see this view of your feet!

Jeremy was very helpful in explaiining this, and brought out 3 pairs of shoes to try out. Both a Nike and a Reebok shoe felt immediately comfortable (the third one was tight across the front), and I could not really decided between them– so I resorted to a complicated decision algorithm… since I had worn plenty of Nike shoes over the years (mostly court shoes), I decided to try something different and got the Reebok Premier Road Plus.

Well, that is more than enough info on my shoes! But I needed them badly, I was running in some ones that I had used last year for both half marathons.

Next up is Saturday, 6 miles in the mountains!

After Saturday’s 8 miler, the bones were a bit sore. We were scheduled to start our light Sunday runs, I opted for some cross training that involved turning all the soil in our vegetable garden (it gets to be quite hard 10 inches down), and then turning again with a load of manure and mulch.

The weekdays runs are supposed to be shorter but faster– I was doing an easier pace for the 40 minute outings, and today I aimed to step it up a notch, so in the same 40 minutes I went about 3/4 mile farther (almost 4 miles today), and if my math is right, my pace went from something like 11:30 minutes per mile down to less than 10:30, about what I did last year in the New Times 10k.

It was not exactly easy, especially starting out, but I suppressed the excuse train fairly well.

Since I will be up north the weekend of October 28, I signed up to run the Rim Country Challenge, a hal marathon in Payson.

It is described there:

This Half Marathon course is not flat and fast so don’t expect to set any speed records. It is called the Rim Country Challenge for that reason… Due to the hilly terrain this race will challenge you as a runner. It should be great training for marathons.

There are two significant hills. One is called “The Challenge”; Paysonites call it Airport Hill. It is .45 mile long with an elevation gain of 165 feet. The other is Vista Road with an elevation drop of 210 feet in .64 mile.

Fun?

Back in the routine today, with a regular Team Diabetes run on the west side of town, Paseo Park in Glendale. The longest I’ve run this month is maybe 5 miles, and today’s menu featured a bite at 8 miles.

Wow, we have a great turnout- I’ve missed the last 3, but this team feels like it has more people that last year, which is very cool, and its great to see both new and old team-mates. And I enjoy running in a place I’ve not run before, points for any new visual stimuli.

I lost track of my actual time, since I stopped about 4 minutes in to stretch, and realized about 10 minutes later I had not started the timer again. Oh well, points off for no accuracy.

This was a simple route, about 2 miles out and back along the paqths that weave the side of a drainage canal– the fun part for those training the for the full monte of the marathon, was getting bac and then doing the whole route again.

So I got my chunk of 8 miles in, without any real stops beyond about 45 seconds at the water station. I just kep the pace slow but steady, and did feel a few times, a bit of kick waiting in reserve.

It won’t bew long (2 weeks) until we hit the double digits, and the zig zag training ladder climbs from there. We also have now an additional slow and easy run on Sundays, as a follow-up to the long Saturdays. And in a few weeks, the Wednesday night track trainings pop in the routine.

I don’t know what it is, but a just loath runniing on a treadmill. Maybe its a lack of natural light, sun, scenery. May its just too much digital readout (time, average pace, distance, heart, calories burned, volume of sweat spilled..).

Today was day two of a meeting here in Newark New Jersey, just a long throw from the airport and a monstrous Budweiser beer brewery. Off in the distance are occasional glances of the New York skyline (we do have a Manhattan meeting tomorrow), but for the most, part, these two days have been under the glare of flourescent lights.

Anyhow, it was all I could do to stay on the blasted treadmill for 36 minutes, even with music on the pod.

Ttomorrow night I head home, and shall not see an airport, hotel, treadmill for at least 2 months.

I’m getting worried as I have slacked with the traning schedule. I know it is early, and last year, I did not even start until October. But my work travel this month has been grueling– I returned home from Austin at 2:00 AM Saturday, not in much shape for the Team D training at 6:30. I had hoped to be able to run a long one on Sunday, but I was down with what felt like a cold or virus, something picked up while on the plane. I rested the whole day, and surprisingly for me, felt recovered by today (usually it takes 4-5 days to shake one of these off).

But now I leave again– tonight it is a red-eye to make a Tuesday morning meeting in New York City, and 3 days of that kind of schedule before getting home Thurtsdfay night. At least, I have no more travel scheduled until November, so I hope I can get back on track.

Another long day in Austin, another morning I would have liked to have slept in. I was glad I went down to the hotel fitness center, but could only muster a slow 40 minutes on the tread. At least tonight I head home, where I get to spend 3 days before another cross country trip.

My grip on a running schedule is being tested by this long stretch of work related travel. Tuesday was another travel day, starting at 4:45 AM leaving my sister’s house at Baltimore, returning rental car to the airport, and getting to the airport in time for a 6:00 AM flight out to Austin, via a plane change in Atlanta.

But that’s where the wheels fell off the schedule. I know something was not right at 8:00 AM since we were crusing at high altitude and no sign of the engine slowing, when the plane was due to land in Atlanta at 8:11. My connection time was tight (8:50 AM), and we were delayed due to.. other planes being in the air and a runway under construction. The attendants assured us that our connecting flights would be notified and they too would be late going out, which was about 30% assuring.

As it turns out, we landed after 9:15, and my plane had left on time at 8:50, so I was dealt an extended stay at the airport until 130 PM. The bottom line was my itinerary had allowed a few hours early in Austin to get a run, but that was eatne by Delta Airline, as I had to go right into set up mode in Austin for the workshops we are doing here.

And as I had a much larger role in this workshop compared to the last ones, I ended up being awake until well after 1:00 AM, and missing a Tuesday run. I did get up an hour early today, and hit the treadmill in the fitness center.

Boy do I loathe running on treadmills, even with an iPod and a TV screen. And I was definitely feeling low on energy, so I managed only a 30 minute run. I should be able to get an outside run in on Friday. My Friday flight home is one that gets me home late (after 2:00 AM), so I am hoping to budge the weekend run to Sunday.

I’m visiting my sisters near Baltimore, so today’s run, long one for the week, was out near te county line between Carroll and Baltimore Counties. It’s some hilly country, nothing severe, but rolling up and down and up and down stuff. Most of the run was south on Liberty Road, not ideal with a lot of traffic, but I was curious to see a place on foot I had seen many times by car.

Early morning shadows on Liberty Road, crossing the reservoir.

So nothing extraordinary beyond a new run in a new state. Last one was New York, next should be Texas. Just rolling along. Got to my starting point about 30 seconds faster on the back run than the out run.