Baby!!

On 1/18/09 at 1:03 pm I became a dad. Emily gave birth to Elsa Jane, who was 8lbs 1.4oz and 20.5 inches long. The first week and few days has been awesome. Grandma Jane has stayed with us and helped out a lot, which gives me plenty of time to hold Elsa. My training has declined quite a bit, but I'll get back to that once I get into the grove of being a dad. There will be some schedule adjustments, but for now, I am just enjoying a lot of time with my new daughter. I am hoping by the time spring comes around, she will be strong enough to be able to ride in a running stroller so I can show her how much fun it is to explore the world by running.

In other big news, our basketball team finally won a game last night. We beat the other team by 27 points. It was fun to crush a team instead of getting crushed each week.

Squeezing in Runs

Yesterday, I knew I wanted to squeeze in a run sometime during the day although I had a lot of other things to accomplish. I wasn't particularly excited about the run though. I really struggled throughout the 7 miler. As I think back a little bit, I might have stumbled on the reason behind most of my bad runs. Whenever I feel like I have to get a run in just because my training schedule says I have to, the run doesn't go very well. However, whenever I am excited to complete my run, I do much better. This is probably why my evening runs feel so much better than my morning runs. At the end of the day, I am sick of sitting in front of a computer and just want to get out and go.

Fun in the Snow

RRR-GF got out for a run tonight for the first time in quite awhile. It was fun to see everyone again. Almost everyone was excited to start training for Fargo Marathon. While our actual training doesn't start for a couple weeks, everyone sounded ready to go. It is great to have a group of people who are there to encourage each other and push each other to do their best.

The group went for a 6 mile run. The weather was pretty nice out tonight with very little wind. The temp was around 7 to 10 degrees so it was quite nice compared to the past week. There was a lot of packed snow on the route, but Stacy provided get-a-grips to those who wanted to use them. The trail shoes I recently purchased continue to do a great job gripping snow. Another challenge was snow pile hurdles at most of the intersections. Most people didn't enjoy jumping over the snow piles but I thought it was kind of fun. My run went pretty well. I finished the 6.1 route in 47:30 or about a 7:48 pace. I was pretty happy with that.

I am looking to make up some mileage this week as my New Years didn't start too well. I caught a stomach flu on January 2nd so it took a few days for me to recover. However, I felt really good tonight so I am going to push forward with my 2010 training goals. I got 6 miles down. I only have 994 to go to get 1,000. If I average about 20 miles per week, I'll make it.