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.

Evening Run

I got out for an easy run tonight. I bought some new socks and windpants today so I tried them out. They worked pretty well. I guess I am not very picky on my clothing. I am still enjoying my Cascadia 4 shoes. I ended up running about 4.5 miles. It took me about 36 minutes. My log says that my average was 7:53 per mile. I also completed 5 sets of 10 pushups in between my stretches as I cooled down. I think this weekend, I am going to try to really get after it and start my training for Earth Day Half Marathon.

Two Hours of Shoveling

Today's workout was shoveling snow. It is kind of a tedious job, but I had to make sure there was a path for my in-laws to get to our place later tonight. It was pretty slippery out as well. I only fell on my butt once, but almost fell about 50 times.



I was at it for an hour and a half when the city plow came by and made a waist high pile of snow at the end of my driveway. At first this annoyed me, but the packed snow was easier to shovel than the drifts, so it wasn't so bad. I was amused that I was more efficient at shoveling snow than the guy across the street who was trying to use a snow blower.



After 2 hours, I finally had a path that one vehicle could fit through. I was pretty happy and starting to work on a path for the second car to go through when my neighbor came by with the loader. It took him about 6 minutes to clear out the rest of the snow in our twinhome split driveway. He cleared out a lot more snow than I had shoveled over the past two hours. Oh well, at least is was a good workout.

Monday Night Intervals

I got out for some speedwork on Monday night. The two block circle I ran was approximately 600M. I did a warm-up lap with my dog, then put her in to complete the rest. I ran 6 loops:
Lap 1 - 2:07 (a little too fast)
Lap 2 - 2:20
Lap 3 - 2:24
Lap 4 - 2:21
Lap 5 - 2:25
Lap 6 - 2:24

These didn't seem to bad. In high school, I hated running 600M intervals and much preferred either 400 or 800. I really want to work on speedwork for awhile as I have been neglecting these types of workouts. I was pretty cold after 6 loops so I called it quits. Next time, I hope to do 8 loops.

New Kicks

Last week the Brooks Cascadia 5s came out. I have been looking at trail shoes for quite awhile and read a lot of good things about the Cascadias. Once the 5s came out, the 4s dropped $30 at REI. Once reduced, I purchase a pair last Sunday. I was pretty excited all week to get them and they came today. I got out for a 4 miles and they worked great. They grip packed snow alot better than my road shoes. The still slip a on glare ice, but for the most part, they do a much better job on the snow. I'm looking forward to doing a couple trail races in them this year also.