Oi, my upper body felt stiff this morning following yesterdays 6 miler. No reason I can think of. Coach Dave did say as the miles increase this month to expect more general body aches, but 6 was not really all that much.

So today is an add on into the weekly schedule to make 4 running days per week (#5 is coming soon…) with Sunday being a slow, relaxed pace recovery run following the longer Saturday ones.

Hey, I have no problem going slow

So it was a long lap around Chaparral Lake with an extra loop around the north end ball fields to make the time.

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Yay, this was the first Team-D practice run I’ve been able to join, and we have a great turnout and group for this year.

Today’s run was held in conjunction with ADA’s big Step Out to Fight Diabetes event, being held in over 200 cities.

So our run today was held at the same location, Rawhide, the old west touristo spot that had moved from Scottsdale a few years ago down to Wild Horse Pass, the Gila Indian community resort area south of Phoenix. Still looks the same!

We were subjected to about 12 rounds of the “Rawhide” song blaring out of the loud speakers at the entrance. Most agreed continued presence to this stream of music might have a going postal effect. But we had places to run, people to meet, etc.

I started off the run at a good pace, but about 1/2 a mile in my insulin pump starts beeping and telling me it has no power, although the battery level is at 3/4. I’ve had a bout of these, and the remedy is some variant of removing the battery, cussing, and putting it back in. So I lost a few steps. The route was lovely, the path around the resort, and out the Interpretive Nature Trail, back, and another short loop.

With the string of 4 hour sleep nights lately I felt myself dragging, plus my mp3 player had run out of juice even before I started. I was appreciative when Jose offered to run the last loop and we chatted, as otherwise, I might have fell prey to the excuse train and walked.

With that, its likely now another 5 or 6 weeks til I can do another Team D run, but I am on track (I hope).

This morning I was really, truly, deeply wanting to hat running.. or maybe changing the blog to, “I Like Sleeping”. This week I have been in Dallas for a conference our organization runs, so all schedules are tossed to the wind, not only running, but eating, sleeping, etc.

On top of all that, I am having to put in late night working on materials for my presentations next month for the trip to Australia (more on that soon).

So come 6am, when the alarm went off and when I was not doing the math on the time zone difference, it was all I could do not to stay there.

But I did not give in. It was way too dark outside to run there, and the part of town I was in was all street and concrete, no sign of a park, so with remorse I headed to the fitness center. Wow, it was busy today- Tuesday, I had the place to myself. Treadmills are always filled in fitness centers, and I almost gave in to doing one of the stair master machines, but I got lucky and a woman finished her turn on the treadmill right in front of me.

I ended up doing a less than 40 minute run, but again, as much as a hate the infernal machines, you cannot avoid running at an even pace. I tossed in 3 rounds of fartlek, raising the pace to 9:30 / mile for a minute and resting back to another minute at 14:00.

So no additions to the excuses count today (ok, maybe I should consider it 0.25 of an excuse. nahhh)

I arrive in Dallas last night for a week here as my organization is running a conference. Yes, running a conference, nothing about running. There did not seem to be anywhere nearby this downtown hotel for some outdoor running, so I resorted to the dreaded treadmill.

I may hate running… but I totally despise running on a treadmill. It’s all I can do out of sheer boredom to not stare at the slowly spinning digits of time.

On the flip side, I cannot escape running at a pace- I did most of it at about a 10:30 – 10:45 pace, which seemed close to my regular mid week pace.

Hopefully by Thursday I can find a place to escape the tedium, an outdoor route.

I’m likely the only person that cares, but the left side of my blog contains a regularly updated list of “totals” for my training- miles run, total time spent running, total weight loss (that never gets far). I track my run logs in an Excel spreadsheet, that also does weekly subtotals, graphs, but I can easily copy the grand totals over.

Last week I added a new thing to track- the number of scheduled training days I came up with excuses not to get out and run. I figured it might keep me accountable. So far it is “1″ for the weekend last month in Chicago where I came up with all kinds of reasons not to run.

Today came close to clicking to 2.

But it did not.

We are up at our cabin in Strawberry, so again I missed a Team D training. In fact, I lost my schedule, so am not sure if this week was a 6,7,8,4 miler. This morning, I slept in to the late hour of 8, and actually spent the morning doing a lot of pick and shovel work to plant new trees, set some boulders for new walking paths, hauling dirt… good physical work.

Come the afternoon, it was time to either drum up an excuse or get out there. The sky was threatening rain all day, and had 2 or 3 short mini bursts. It looked like another was on its way, even with thunder off to the south.

But I figured, the worst things that might happen is I get wet, so at 4:00pm I strapped on my gear and headed out. It was cool (maybe 60s) and this was the first run in along sleeve top. I had used MapMyRun to chart out a bowtie loop from Strawberry Drive and Fossil Creek road, giving me 2 loops that would offer variety and a bail out option.

The first leg was the hill challenge, around Ralls Road, which stair steps up to a high ledge looking over the town, and then drops down again to Highway 87. After warm ups, I set out in a slow steady drizzle, and about 0.6 miles in, the sky opened in buckets, and I was thoroughly drenched. At that point getting wetter is not an issue. I was amazed my cheapo mp3 player did not stop working as it was providing welcome musical diversions.

The rain pelted for maybe 10, 12 minutes before breaking to a whole of blue sky. I turned right and ran a bit south on the shoulder of Highway 87 just past the Pine/Strawberry trailhead. I did the turn around and headed back to the start point, about 3.9 miles. I had charted a second loop out Fossil Creek Road, and might have easily shrugged it off except I know it is time to ratchet up the running distance/time. Actually around miles 4 and 5 I felt some nice spring in my step, and ran west, past the Strawberry Schoolhouse before a turn around at Dime Rd.

It was an even slow run back to start point, and I was drained- this being by far the longest run in a while, yet, it was really less than a third of what I need to do on Marathon day.

But no excuses today!

Another day to run a slightly different route- from Chaparral Lake south along the Scottsdale Greenbelt on the path, made it close to Osborn before I hit the 20 minute turn around. With the slightly cooler morning temps, actually noticeably cooler, there are a lot more people out walking, biking, skating, running, leading dogs, strollers, carts with fishing supplies.

I thought I was going at a good clip heading back but it seemed to take another minute of running to get to the start point.

Feeling good, though. No shin pains at all.

We are headed up tonight to Strawberry, so its another solor run in the mountains Saturday. Next weekend I actually get to run with Team D!

This morning was that magic kind of morning.

Not the kind of one where I sprint a 5 minute mile (that is before I wake up!), but that magic time of year in Arizona where the oppressive heat of summer cracks… opening the door and it was actually cool outside, much cooler than the house.

I did my old canal route this morning for my 40 minutes…. a bit better pace, got to about the turn around spot at 20 minutes that was in the range of my better tuns last year.

Cool is cool.

With yesterday’s long day of travel home from Boston, I nudged the Saturday run into Sunday… I might have done a nice run along the Charles River in Cambridge, but (a) I was way too tired at 6am and (b) it was raining miserably. So I opted to do the run today.

The plan for Team-D was for us to run “fartlek” a word the running audience most likely knows and one everyone else wondering to themselves… what the heck is that?

Fartlek comes from the Swedish language for “speed play”, and is a training technique pioneered by Swedish coach Gösta Holmér. It is more or less a method where you alternate fast and slow paces. For today’s run, Coach Dave have described it in email as:

We’ll be doing a 60 minute training run and introduce you to a new Training Aid. We’ll be combining Interval Training (which is normally done on a track where the intervals are distance) with Fartlek (a Swedish word meaning Speed Play). To do this everyone, or pair of people, will need a watch. We’ll start off with 1 minute of very slow (it might be a walk for the runners) running and then switch to 1 minute of faster running (about the pace you would use if you were going only 1 mile). Then it will be back to 1 minute very slow and 1 minute of faster. You will alternate these until you have used up all 60 minutes. Again turning around after 30 minutes if you don’t make it to our turnaround point. Why am I having you do this? It’s to show you how to use a slower pace to recover when you get tired. After a few segments of the 1 minute faster, you will think you can’t go any farther, but you’ll find that the 1 minute slower pace will allow you time to recover. The caution is not to do the faster pace too fast or accelerate to it too fast.

I had never run fartlek before, and.. it was not easy! I set out to head west to Pima Road and out the canal path on the Salt River- Pima Indian reservation. I got in about my first 7 or 8 intervals okay, but started feeling really winded around the 25 minute mark, turned around and and ended up walking a few of the slow minutes. At about 35 minutes I took a longer walking break, and then decided to slow jog the rest of the way home.

I am not sure of I got the full effect, but it was a change in routine!

I ran today in Bahhhhh-stin. I flew all day from Phoenix to Boston on Wednesday for meetings my organization has here this week hosted at MIT. I stayed Wednesday night at the home of my colleague Phil, and when I mentioned running, we strongly encouraged me to try the 2.5 loop around Fresh Pond Reservation- the water supply for the City of Cambridge. And it was across the street from his house.

Trail along Fresh Pond Reservation, Cambridge, MA

Oh what glorious weather it is here! In the low 70s, maybe 60s this morning, and crisp, New England sunshine. The leaves are whispering hints about when they might just drop. The path follows the circumference of the pond, sometimes paved, other times soft dirt, and with the dense trees, you feel miles away from the busy city that is just up the hill.

Lots of walkers, kids on bikes, dogs following along. Full of life.

On the scale of runs, it was nothing spectacular… still feeling lagged from the time zone jump and the long travel, but I got my time in today, which is what counts.

Not much to write.

Did not want to run this am.

Did anyhow. And better pace them expected.

Nuff said.