Yes, in Arizona, talking about the heat is trite and stale. Yet… it gets to you. We are now in a streak where Phoenix is going to bust through a record of 29 days with high temps over 110 degrees, and theres time for a home run record of maybe 35?

With last weekend’s travel knocking the schedule askew, I was feeling un-inclined, un-energetic to run this morning (got home from the airport last night after 9:30 pm). So my compromise was to try an evening run, at 6pm.

I’m not sure I’ll do that again this time of year! The heat just baked my brain, baked my soul, and fried the motivation right out of me. I managed to run 32 minutes before just feeling exhausted. C’mon monsoons!

Did you know... Sharon Stone's diabetes did not stop her wowing us in Basic Instinct (from Keeping Well With Diabetes Newsletter)
See more diabetic facts...

Sigh, I have already strayed from the schedule. My trip to Chicago Friday afternoon was uneventful, a nice thing given I had missed the tornado and electrical outages that pounded the city one day earlier. But the flight, the 90 minutes it took to get downtown, the time zone, the late night talking to colleagues, the darkness at 5am on Saturday… well you can see the Excuse Train was just chugging along.

In fact it continued right on through Sunday- that morning was the running of a big triathalon (our hotel was full of these hearty athletes), and everything along the lake front was busy with those activities.

So I waited until Monday morning, after my conference was over.

It was a gorgeous clear day, and I ran slowly south along the edge of Lake Michigan, around the jut of land covered with museums, and back again. It was not the length of the scheduled Saturday run, but I could feel some big insulin lows coming on (I had my stuff) and felt just weak,

… is to shake up the route. My mind gets bored easily with routes, even with audio distractions. So my goal this year is to never run the same route 2 runs in a row. It’s not that difficult where I live given quiet neighborhoods, the Scottsdale Greenbelt, and close access to the canals.

So today, from near Chaparral Lake, I went west on Jackrabbit, and turned north on the Indian Bend path, going north, and getting to Hayden, decided on the spot to loop back along the east side of Hayden rather than doing an out and back. This was good as that side of Hayden is well shaded by apartments and the wall for Saguaro high school’s stadium. It worked out great, getting to my starting point at 39:00 so I went that extra minute farther. Wow.

But even better, I felt a little of that “oomph” in my step where I was picking up the pace a little, and felt like I could have easily gone farther. I am hoping that is the consistency effect of adding on that base layer of frequent runs.

And my blood sugar/insulin are more tuned today. Before running, I tested 84, had a bowl of fruit, and tuned my pump’s basal down from 1.95 to 1.10, and after the run registered a 124. That’s right on target.

There is no obvious reason to have bad run today. Plenty of rest, feeling relaxed, no aches/pains…. about the only thing worth complaining about is the 110 degree moist August heat.

But I was super draggy today, or at least it felt that way. With the same route as last time (west to canals, south to Camelback) I was at the turn around point quicker (where I took a 90 second breather) and got back to the start about a minute under in terms on out and back.

And now that I am back home, showerde, I am even more curious as to even if I was dragging. With Jerry’s advice (one ought not to ignore the advice of a diabetic who has run 37 marathons!) I ran with the meter on about 60% of normal basal (when I left I was 117 and 225 at return, had a bowl of cereal pre-run) — there is always fine tuning to do as a diabetic, one thing I know for sure.

Oh well, until Thursday… off and running!

Today was the the official kickoff for training with Team D with the first run of a timed mile at Scottsdale Community College. It was great to see so many people out at 6am for a humid run, and I’m proud to see that 2 of my former colleagues at Maricopa, Shelly and Gaye are on board with us.
Coach Dave did a good review of stretching, we did 2 laps of warm up, a timed one lap to set our pace (I got excited and went way too fast at 2:05- I ought to be at 2:15 - 2:20), and then ran a timed mile.

On that one I was right on pace for lap 1 (2:15), lost a bit on 2 with a shoe tie (4:45), right on target than at 3 (7:01) and 4 (9:18). But ugh, I am feeling the loss of not having done consistent runs in the summer as I am winded.

I have a morning meeting at had to skip on the equipment seminar… on the list this week is to get some new shoes, the ones I have were actually found at a thrift store (!!!) but fit better than any of my old ones.

I’ll miss next Saturday, actually the next since next week I am in Chicago for a conference and the following weekend will be in Strawberry. But the runs shall go on!

It’s Thursday, happy run day Thursday. Last night was the Team-D kick off event, where a room full of folks at the Turquoise room at Scottsdale Community College came to show their desire to join Team D and do something crazy like run a marathon. It was great to see a bunch of folks back from last year, and quuite a few of them looked very fit like they’ve been running since the end of the last Rock and Roll marathon- good for them!

But afterwards, I had another late night of work publishing a bunch of web content for my organizations online conference happening this week- that was up til 1:30, and solid sleep until 5:30 when it was time to feed the doggies, and put on the running shoes.

It feels good to get my 40 minutes in, easy and steady as it was, running the canal south to Camelback and Scottsdale rd and back again to Chaparral Park. I was impressed by the number of wiry old men who ran past me like they were teens. “Slow and easy, run your own pace..” I need to stay in my gear, and ease into a comfortable running form.

One of the things I loathe about ramping up the exercise is the increased frequency of bottoming out on blood sugars. It interrupts what you are doing, and darn makes it hard to try and lose weight when several times a day you have to ingest sugar.

I’m doing more this year to pre- and post-test my blood sugars on morning runs. Actually, for this ones less than an hour, I have been disconnecting my pump, as even without it, I am dropping 40-60 mg/dL, like from 125 to 59 (today), 135 to 86 (last week), etc. This si telling me I need a bit of energy food before I go, and during. In the lat 2 years I have had only a handful of low bonks while running, but you can never get too lax.

This morning’s podcast listen was (not even all of it, a long show)
Technometria: The Myths of Innovation with Scott Berkun (mp3)

See you Saturday at the first Team-D training!

I’m marking August as the official start of training. Based on the concepts of the foundation of consistent running or frequency, described by Coach Dave in the Team D info sessions, as well as expressed in the book Cliff recommended, The Competitive Runners Handbook, I am trying to avoid missing runs.

Well, I failed Saturday. We were up north in Strawberry, and devoted much of our time to working on my mother-in-law’s home there, si I was cutting grass, and digging, etc installing some drainage pipes for her gutter runoff. I was working all day Saturday and sore Sunday.

But today’s another day, and I was out there, in the humidity of Arizona August (nice downpour last night around 2am), and running the upper end of the recommended 30-40 minutes for mid week trainings this week.

On the podcast listening today was:

• Second half of Online Community Hostility with Robert Knox (mp3)
• Auto-Buddies: Connecting Relevant Strangers by Lee S. Dryburgh (mp3)
• Empowering People and the Coming Identity Layer of Everything with Kaliya Hamlin “Identity Woman” what a moniker! (mp3)

Oh my, I got myself into trouble for running today — stayed up to almost 1:30 AM working on my Australia stuff, knowing full well that would dent my running enthusiasm, if not energy today.

But this year, I am eager to make sure I have the solid training base of consistent miles/runs to build on. So I again loaded up the podcasts and di my 30 some minutes around Chaparral Lake. I cannot say there was anything super remarkable, beyond how good it feels not to give in to the devil whispering on your shoulder.

Today’s running podcasts included two from ITConversations:

• Space Travel and Social Media - interview with Esther Dyson (mp3)
• Online Community Hostility with Robert Knox (mp3)

Yesterday was another fun evening with Dave and Cydne, and team-mate Brian, for a Team-D informational meeting at Rio Salado College. Where are all my Maricopa friends? Ah, one I know— Shelly, whom I lunched with yesterday, let me know she was coming next Wednesday to the kick off. That is so cool! It means we’ll get to hang out every Saturday.

I’d been thinking about a different strategy of fund raising this year. In the past two years, I’ve not had any issue raising money (I think it was $1800 in 2006 and $1400 last year), but I’m a bit leery to go back to the same folks with my palms out, “Please, sir/ma’am… may I have some more?”

So I was thinking I just might underwrite it myself this year, or only solicit through my online social networks (my 4 friends).

But a batter opportunity dropped from the sky. I got an invite to be part of a one day education product review panel in LA, and the honorarium more than covers what I need to raise…. so on September 5, I will be done fund raising! Wooo!

I’ll be sweeping up the web site soon, prepping it for another year. Have some ideas to make my training miles automatically update here rather than running it through a spreadsheet.

So let’s get out there and Run!

The Excuse Train tried to rumble this morning, but I would not hear of it. I’ve been staying up work late these days, trying to get my materials prepared for my trip to Australia - yes, it is not until October, but this involves Full days of presentations and workshops in 7 cities over a 14 day span of zany time. And prepping ahead of time is something I almost have never done.

That said, I was not going to give in early considering August means I am “in” training. So I planned to do my 30 minutes of run time around Chaparral lake, similar to last Thursday, but I am fairly sure I went farther in the same span of time.

A benefit of this time outside is I can listen to some podcast speeches and interviews in my field, and its a great way to absorb info and let the mind go away from the thoughts of fatigue, etc. So I’ll start trying to note what I listen to, though it should only interest the geekiest of my 3 readers.

So today it was Jon Udell’s interview with Dr. John Willinsky (mp3) followed by the TED Talk by Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page (mp3) plus a little bit of music at the tail end (Cheryl Crow, Van Morrison and the Who).

Anyhow, I am on target. Tonight I head down to Rio Salado College for another Team-D informational meeting (6:30 at the Rio Conference Center).