Running My Mouth: Cake

Submitted Question/Comment Hybrid:

First of all, LOVE the blog, keep it up. Now my question. Would you rather weigh in at 220 or run a 3:20 marathon? I guess what I’m asking is why do you run? Is it for the continued improved health/weight loss or are you now driven by beating your personal record?

First of all, MOM, put the comment submissions on hold, push away from the computer, and run to the store to get me my Sour Cream and Onion potato chips. And not the ones with ridges; those  scratch the roof of my mouth and throat because I like to eat them a dozen at a time.

Weighing in at 220 would be a pretty optimal weight and running a 3:20 marathon would be a pretty optimal finishing time, so on the surface it is a difficult decision for me. But, after some thought, I am going to say that as of right now I would rather be able to run a 3:20 marathon.

The biggest reason I’d choose the finishing time is that I could imagine weighing in at 220 and not being able to run a 3:20 marathon, but I have a hard time imagining it the other way around. Running a 3:20 marathon would almost certainly mean that I would weigh in at 220 or thereabouts. So my answer has a little bit of a ‘have my cake and eat it too’ element.

In my lifetime, for me personally, I have found losing weight to lose weight to be impossible. While I’ve reached ‘goal weights’ at certain points, the reward just isn’t there. There is a sense of accomplishment but that dissipates rather quickly whether it be because weight is gained back or the goal weight becomes the new normal. I’ve found that if I’m not happy with a current weight, I won’t necessarily be happy with a goal weight either.

Whereas running, or exercise in general, is more like the gift that keeps on giving. It more positively effects mood/attitude/what-have-you on an every-conceivable-moment level. There are definitely bumps in the road but for the most part as long as one gives what they can without overdoing it, progress will be made.

One of the best pieces of advice as far as weight loss goes I’ve received was about 3 years ago and it’s hard for me to share the advice the same way I received it, but it went something like, “Adjust how you do things and the body will have to follow.” This was accompanied by a vacuum-sealed like hand gesture and sound. What that means to me is that weight isn’t just going to disappear, there has to be a measure of effort put forth.

Making weight loss the secondary goal, or putting it on the back burner, has proven to be much more successful for me. Currently, I’d say having running goals is the primary goal and I feel like the weight loss (gain, at times.) will have to follow suit as long as I keep doing right by the running portion.

To answer the last question, I am currently more driven to beat my personal record and the improved health benefits are just icing on the cake.

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This submission made me think of the lyric And then one day you’ll find ten years have got behind you; No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.*  from the song “Time” by Pink Floyd. I started running 2.5 years ago and I have a hard time imagining running for another 7.5 years. But I also never would’ve thought 2.5 years was possible 2.49 years ago.

Song picks up at the 1:30 mark; lyrics at the 2:30 mark.

*Edited.

‘Ran’bling On: The Uphill Climb

I noticed the other day that a route that I run quite regularly is not nearly as flat as I would’ve assumed. Which got me to notice that I tend to run with my head down, focused on the path 5-10 yards in front me. Occasionally, I’ll glance up to see into the distance. Maybe this is standard running practice, but it got me thinking all metaphorical-thingamabob.

Lately, I’ve done what I’d consider a good job of focusing at the current task at hand, that particular day’s run. I try not to look ahead too much at what I’d like to accomplish tomorrow or how many miles I’d like to run that week. I find that it has helped with the whole ‘training’ process by looking at runs on a more individual basis; instead of grouping runs together.

That being said, I still have goals for each week and set-up in my head what I’d like to do each day of a particular week before it starts. But I just think I’m doing a better job at keying in on what I’m doing today, the 5-10 yards in front of me, to make my next day’s and week’s goals, looking up into the distance, possible.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that when I start climbing a big hill, I just need to watch my feet; maybe glancing up every now and again to make sure I’m making progress up the hill. It just seems like the more I focus on the top of the hill the less patience I seem to have.

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I made the mistake of glancing at the St. Louis Marathon’s training schedule; just to see what they suggest. I’m human.

I’m going to go on a mini-rant/a my point-of-view/a it’s-my-blog-and-I’ll-blog-if-I-want-to.

I’ll start by saying that I understand why all the training programs I’ve seen have the long runs on either Saturday or Sunday. Typically, events are on the weekends, so it gets the mind-body-soul trifecta used to running long distances on that day of the week.

I tend to try to get the majority of my mileage done early in the week, Monday through Thursday. Lighter on Monday, heavier on Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday. I like this for a few reasons. The main one being that it takes the pressure off of Friday-Sunday, the weekend, the time when our corporate lifestyles tell us to relax. The other reason being that if say I want to get a long run in on Wednesday but things don’t work out that way, I still have Thursday-Sunday to make up for it.

I guess also I like to keep the weekends a little more open. Even though I never have any plans on the weekends. But if something were to come up, they’d be open!

(Note: I still plan to run my longest run on either the Saturday or Sunday before I start tapering for the marathon. I plan to also be consistently hypocritical with everything I write.)

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Also, I don’t like using a couple words: training, race, and competitor.

I tend to use the words workout, event, and participant. I’m getting whiny.

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To catch up with my ‘training’, I have 8 weeks left until the Go! St. Louis Marathon. So I’d like to have 5 more weeks of building mileage and then 3 weeks for a taper.

I’ve been able to hit 50 miles for the past three weeks and would like to get up to 60+ in the coming weeks, maybe even dabble in a 70*.

There was a time when I wanted to have a week straight of 10+ mile runs; that time is not now. I’m not going to say that won’t be happening in the next 5 weeks because anything is possible, but I just don’t like the sound of that at the moment.

Running My Mouth: Running Workouts

Submitted Question: “Ever thought of interval or sprint training?”

I had to look up both of these training methods to find out what they are all about. To summarize them quickly as best as I can:

• Interval training is switching between high and low intensity for a set amount of time and repeating. Example: 30 seconds high intensity followed by a minute ‘recovery’ at a lower intensity and repeat.
• Speed training is much the same as it incorporates increasing speed during the run or by adding hills and sprints to the workout.

I have definitely thought about looking into different types of running workouts but have never given it serious thought; as witnessed by me having to look up these popular workouts to find out what they are.

I can only assume that people add these to their running r0utines in the hopes to increase their  speed and strength. To each their own, I guess. I am not at a point where I feel like I am at a standstill in either the speed or strength category. Meaning that I feel like I am improving everyday by doing things my own way.

I’d say that I’m a natural ‘progression’ type runner. I start my runs slow and gradually increase speed as I go. Most runs that I do are ‘out and backs’ so I try to save enough energy to actually get back to where I started.

The main reason I’d be kind of weary to add speed or interval training is that I just assume that the faster or harder I push myself, the higher the risk of injury. Prior to starting long-distance running a few years back, I thought I could whip myself into shape by doing sprints. I thought I was Carl Lewis incarnate. I figured if I just added a couple extra sprints each day, I’d be an Olympic gold medalist before no time. Day 2 of this and you could’ve found me applying an entire bottle of IcyHot to my quads.

I still have the lingering memories of nearing tearing my upper-leg muscles from my skeleton by pushing my body beyond its capabilities. So for now, I like to just keep every run comfortable; to a point.

There are definitely times, mostly towards the end of runs, where I am going faster than I maybe should be, but never all-out sprint. I have this crazy notion that I run with and it is that I treat every run as though it is a marathon. Whether it is 4 miles or 10 miles, I run it like I’d want to run the 26.2 miles.

As of right now, I can see my paces slowly increasing and I am content with the slow and steady improvement. But maybe in time, if I get bored, I may try out these fancy, new-fangled interval and speed training methods.

‘Ran’bling On: 1,000 dailymiles

I realize the pretension in this post is already pretty thick, but I finally reached 1,000 miles logged on the dailymile.com. It took me 228 days. I know this because I looked it up on convertunits.com.

I signed up for dailymile after…

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I reached 50 miles for the week today. This is the first time I’ve gotten to 50 miles in a week since May of last…

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By running today, I continued my running streak which is now at 58 days. I started the streak back in…

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I got nothing.

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Before I went out running today, I didn’t really need any extra motivation (I knew the previous things mentioned in this fail of a post were happening.) but I decided to listen to some music to get me amped/jacked/pumped/what-have-you’d. I was listening to some pretty choice tunes. Songs that people might actually listen to when they are working out. (Except for that Coldplay one… Clicked on it by accident… There was a virus…) Any-which-way, this is the song I listened to right before heading out to run. I mean I like the song. But to have it stuck in my head for the past seven hours? Even my purveyance of questionable music has its limits. Should’ve left to run right before the internet malfunctioned and played Coldplay.

‘Ran’bling On: Streak Statistics

Below are some stats from my recent (today) 50 day running streak. I only tend to keep track day-to-day and for the current week, so I had to go back in time to retrieve these stats. I log my miles at http://www.dailymile.com/people/tdessonville. Consider this my most exciting post to date.

• Total Days: 50 (December 10th, 2011 – January 28th, 2012)
• Runs: 51 (Ran twice on 12/19)
• Total Mileage: 296.34 miles (I wish I had known I was this close to a ‘milestone’ number of 300 miles. Not really.)
• Daily Average: 5.9268 miles
• Average Run Length: 5.8106 miles
• Average Per Week: 41.4876 miles
• Shortest Runs: 2.65 & 3.04 miles (Both run on 12/19)
• Longest Run/Distance: 8.32 miles (12/25, A Christmas Miracle!)
• Longest Run/Time: 1:14:42 (12/18, 8.11 miles)
• Shortest Distance/Day: 4.31 miles (12/14)
• Treadmill Runs: 12
• Total Treadmill Miles: 78.24
• Average Treadmill Run: 6.52 miles (I’ve become much more comfortable on a treadmill than I had been in the past.)
• Fastest Pace (Official): 8:15 per mile (1/25: 7.27 miles on a treadmill; and 1/10: 7.26 miles outdoors)
• Fastest Pace (Unofficial): 4:30 per mile (1/7 – 1/9. I was without my Garmin for a couple days, so I had to guess my pace.)
• Slowest Pace: 9:18 per mile (12/10 – First day of streak. I don’t keep a daily journal but I seem to recall not being entirely impressed with this run.)
• Runs Above 9 Minute Pace: 7

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Maybe if I can keep going and get to 100 straight days, I can do a side-by-side comparison. That might just be too exhilarating for a blog.

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I forgot to mention ‘hamburger’ in my recent post about not eating processed meats. I will largely stay away from fast-food and restaurant hamburger because most of it is that 80/20 junk where they infuse fat back into the meat to increase profits fat content. I’m really on the fence about this one. I’ll probably continue to eat it; just to be safe. Not that I eat much hamburger to begin with…

Oh, living in America is great!

‘Ran’bling On: Goodbye, Meat!

Before I get started, I just wanted to let you, the blog-reading public, know that I have added a ‘Submit a Question’ tab above that allows you, the blog-reading public, to ask/tell me anything anonymously and I will answer/respond in a subsequent blog post. (How’s that for a run-on sentence?) I tested out the technology as best I could, and it seemed to work. I anonymously submitted the question, “Why are you so awesome at running?” I will not be answering that question; unless someone else were to ask it. To which I would reply… Submit a Question and find out.

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So I’ve decided to give meat the boot. Meaning no more Fun Dogs, polish sausages, delicious grilled brats, or beef sticks. No more gyro-meat, bone-in ham, thinly-sliced turkey, thick-cut turkey, maple-syrup bacon or sausage. Pepperoni, salami, and other scrumptious Italian cuts will no longer be consumed by me.

I’ve decided that I will no longer eat processed meat; for the time being. This necessary dietary change does not include: steaks, chops, ribs, whole or half chickens, Thanksgiving turkey, lamb, veal (Never had it; not sure I ever will.), liver, fish, squirrel, raccoon, or corn-fed field mouse (Covering my bases.).

I ate my first Veggie Delite at Subway yesterday and I must say… I probably will just avoid eating at Subway. It was good and all, but the looks I felt I was getting from the staff made it seem like I dug underneath the wire and gotten into Farmer Brown’s cabbage patch.

No SPAM for me, thanks. Image via Wikipedia

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This ‘no processed meat’ thing won’t be too big of a change. I generally don’t eat many cold-cuts; except on the occasional pizza or aformentioned sandwich. So trying to eliminate it all together may, in turn, eliminate some other poor choices from the ole diet. So that someday, when the waitress asks if I want dessert I don’t have to point to my belly and say, “I can’t afford it.”

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If I go for a run tomorrow, it’ll be the 50th day in a row that I’ve done so. I’m planning on doing so and hopefully I can put some statistics together from the past 49 (hopefully 50) days. Gloat, gloat, gloat. It’s all I do.

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If you don’t like this song, you are probably a much better person than I. After I heard the song on the radio and thought it was catchy, I find out that it’s on this television show I’ve never seen called ‘Glee‘. That’s it. I have nothing to say about ‘Glee‘ or the people that watch it. But I did like myself and the song a whole lot less when I found out that information.

Here We Go

My life has become so corporate lately and running is to blame. I wear all these name-brand technical T’s, running shoes, socks, undergarments, what-have-yous. I think I even broke down and bought some Crest and Tide in the past couple years. That being said it is only appropriate that I enter my 2012 marathon schedule with one of the current marketing slogan’s of Bud Light, “Here We Go.”

I’ve had a Bud Light, or two, in my life and it’d be just fine with me if I never drank another one. To the point…

I signed up for the GO! St. Louis Marathon. The date that I’ll finish this marathon is April 15th. (See what I did there: Marathon, St. Louis, Anheuser-Busch, Bud Light, Here We Go.)

When I signed up for my first marathon a year ago, I set up four goals (In order of importance/likelihood of happening):

1. (Goal.) Finish.
2. (Lofty Goal.) Finish under 4 hours.
3. (Loftier Goal.) Finish under 3:30.
4. (Pipe-Dream Goal.) Qualify for the Boston Marathon.

I knocked off the first two goals at Grandma’s Marathon, so this year I’d like to get goal 3 done. Keep in mind that I view it as a goal and not an end-all-be-all.

I mentioned earlier that I wanted to run up to eight marathons this year. I’d like to get that Loftier Goal at some point this year, not necessarily in St Louis. Here is a list of the ones I had in mind:

• April 15th: St Louis Marathon
• May 12th: Lake Wobegon Marathon or Brookings Marathon
• June 3rd: Minneapolis Marathon
• July 16th: Okoboji, IA Marathon
• August 11th: Hurly, WI Marathon
• September 2nd: Minocqua, WI Marathon
• ***** October 7th: Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon *****
• November 6th: Norwalk, WI Marathon

So far I’ve only signed up for the St. Louis Marathon. Bet you can’t guess which one I’m most looking forward to running. Redemption is sweet.

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A little music from the great movie ‘The Last Waltz.’ The second verse of ‘The Weight’ is a good reminder that Mavis Staples is better at singing than I will ever be at anything.

 

‘Ran’bling On: Month Straight

Image via Wikipedia

As of yesterday, I’ve run for a month straight. Not Forrest Gump-style month straight, but I’ve ran every day for 31 straight days. I was ready to consider it a month by day 28 because if it’s good enough for February, it’s good enough for me. But, instead I opted to wait until 31 days to make the most exciting announcement in running history. I didn’t want any of my 2.5 million tuned-in readers to call foul if I did the leap-year 29 day announcement or in-between knuckle-months 30 day.

I like to think of this streak being Cal Ripken-esque. Just a guy going out everyday with his lunch bucket and hard hat, getting the work finished, and calling it a day; waking up the next to do it all over again. Unfortunately, the streak has been more A.C. Green-ish. Just a guy going out everyday hoping he won’t have to pull his own man-muscle when he’s done competing; wishing the dull pain in his forearm was caused by something other than self-loathing.

The two shortest runs of the streak were 2.5 and 3 miles, respectively. I ran those on the same day, a little daily double if you will. Beyond that, I’ve ran at least over 4 miles each day; topping out with a couple 8 mile runs. I haven’t been close to overdoing it in the least.

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I’m not really sure how long I plan to keep this streak going. My thoughts each day now are, “I’m not going to let (insert life moment) snap my streak,” or “It’s too nice to not go running.” So, with those thoughts in mind, a Minnesota cold-spell or just overwhelming personal circumstances may be the only things standing in the way of my streak continuing.

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I started the streak on December 10th and since then, I think I’ve gained about 3-5 pounds. Trust me, it is not a case of ‘muscle weighs more than fat.’ It is a case of dumping as much ‘energy’ down my throat because ‘I’m running 5 point-whatever miles a day for the past month!”

I’ve heard that the government is wanting to change the labels on food to give a more accurate description, or something, to consumers. I was recently in Seattle overnight and went to a restaurant, which I won’t name (Start paying me, IHOP, and I’ll promote you.), and I’m not sure if it’s a state-law in Washington, but they listed the calories for all of their menu items. I was terrified. I simply couldn’t order anything. I ended up ordering an omelet with egg-substitute, no cheese and vegetables. I think it weighed in at 350 calories. I’m pretty sure I ordered my water with no ice; who knows how my calories are locked in them.

Anyway, I know that if Minnesota started doing this that it would have some type of effect immediately, but over time the wonders of marketing would even things back out. “Doritos – Now only 990 calories per bag!” Not exactly a restaurant example, but maybe you get the idea.

I now am looking at wanting to lose closer to 20 pounds than the customary 10-15. I’m not sure how I want to go about this. I don’t know if I want to just put my entire diet on lock-down for a couple weeks to a month, count calories, or just plain stop foraging/grazing/what-have-you during all hours of the day.

Either way, I’ll get my weight there someday; I have the rest of my life to make it there.

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I don’t have any running events planned at the moment, but I have looked at a couple marathons, and by couple I mean a dozen. Sitting here in January, I’d like to run a marathon every month from April through November. That would be eight marathons for the year, ten total in my life. Nice round number. That being said, I’ve found eight that are pretty evenly spread out, 4-5 weeks apart, so the logistics of completing them wouldn’t be too far-fetched. I just need to sign up for them and start going to work.

I found last year that the worst part of running a marathon was the training part, so running multiple marathons like that would cut down on the training time for each one, right? Or, maybe, I’ll end up pulling a muscle besides my man-muscle. Either way, that’s where I may be headed for this year.

Running Up the Score: College Football

Way back in 2004, I was a proponent of a college football championship game which would feature the top-SEC team versus the best-of-the-rest. Now, there is no proof of this because I didn’t blog it. But, if you go to the St. Cloud city dump and find the remnants of a case of Milwaukee’s Best; those cans will tell you I said it.

The SEC has been the most dominant conference in college football for as long as I can remember. I recall watching the 1990-something Something Bowl that pitted Alabama vs. Miami and watching George Teague straight-up rip the heart out of South Beach on his infamous takeaway(?) and being competely enthralled by how physical Alabama was compared to Miami.

I don’t want to go into too much revisionist history, but the biggest reason I wanted an SEC team playing for the championship is because the conference is built to destroy itself. Either the handful of top-tier programs run each other ragged over the course of the regular season and the winner ends up with a 10-2/9-3 record, or one team separates itself and happens to run the gamut and go undefeated. The 2004 season happened to be the year that Auburn exited the meat-grinder unscathed and didn’t get a shot to play for a national title because everyone loves USC and Oklahoma.

USC and Oklahoma weren’t undeserving of playing for a title. Both won their respective conferences and were undefeated. The year prior, Oklahoma happened to lose its conference title game and still end up in title game vs. LSU; which resulted in the split national title with USC.

Anywho, I am convinced that the 2004 Auburn squad was far and away better than both USC and Oklahoma. Did the SEC just start churning out college football’s best team 5 seasons ago? Or has the BCS/tradition allowed for a level playing field when it isn’t level at all?

The college football ‘tradition’ of bowl games to me basically means, ‘We’ve always had a broken system and we aren’t about to change it.’ I can understand that back when the system was instituted there may have been a reason to allow for finals and what-not, but today? I see no reason to have your best product sit in the backroom for over a month collecting dust.

Being that I think the SEC is by far the best, deepest conference that the NCAA has to offer, and that the top-2 teams from the conference may very well be the best two teams in the nation, I think having those teams meet for the national championship is a step back for both the SEC and college football, alike. It is a step back for the SEC because it doesn’t allow for the conference to prove its dominance over college football. It is a step back for college football because it basically allows for the national champion to be nothing more than a paper champion. This was the exact reason that the BCS system was instituted, to prevent the paper champion. And yet, back in 2004, and again this year, the winner of the championship game will be a paper champion. The winner will be the best team in all the land because that’s what all the experts think.

The best analogy that I can think of is that this is exactly the scenario that played out before the NFL-AFL merger. I’m sure people just assumed the NFL played the best brand of football and that the AFL just kind of existed in the background. I’ve always read how shocking it was when the AFL actually won a Super Bowl, proving maybe they did belong in the same class as the NFL all along.

As unlikely as it is, I think the NCAA needs to take a page from the MLB and actually use some higher-level thinking in fixing their broken system. I’m not claiming to have all/any of the answers, but the best way I can think of to fix the system is to institute a 16-team tournament at the conclusion of the regular season that would feature all conference winners and the next, currently, 5 best teams.

This system would go a long way towards improving college football and I might get back to the reasons why in a later post. I’ve always enjoyed having NCAA football on Saturdays with all the regular season jockeying, but every year the December swoon and early-January bickering always seems to damage the product/brand just a little bit more.

Streaking in the Cold

This little post should really be called my ‘knock on wood’ post. I’ve been extremely lucky to have had a December with such wonderfully warm (comparatively) weather with low to no precipitation. All that said, I’ve been able to get out and run 18 of the 21 days of this month so far, including the last 12 days.

Twelve straight days of running is probably a record for me, but without keeping track during my two previous years of running, I can’t say for certain. I know that when I started, I would run most every day or 5 to 6 days a week. I plan to keep this little running streak alive for the time being, with no particular goal of how long.

To spice things up because running can get quite boring at times, I’ve implemented what I call the ‘Last seven days’ running plan. It’s probably pretty confusing to explain, but I’ll try to anyway. I plan to run more each particular day than I did the week before to gradually increase my mileage over the last seven days. For example, last Wednesday I ran 4.31 so today I ran 4.5 miles to increase my mileage over the past seven days by .19 miles.

I know .19 miles doesn’t sound like much, but if I were to do that every day for a week, that would be an increase of 1.33 miles. Over the course of a couple weeks that could mean the difference of 40 miles over a seven-day period to 45 miles over that period of time. I hope you are thoroughly confused, readers of this blog from 431 countries on this planet (Hey, subscribers from Swaziland!).

But, who knows how long this ‘Last seven days’ plan will last. I use it as a way to make running fun and interesting day to day. I’m the first to admit that it can get a bit repetitive at times; especially being stuck getting mileage done on a treadmill.

I’m not sure I’d recommend using this method unless you have a comfortable running base established. But, gradually increasing times/distances/what-have-yous over a period of time would be what I would suggest even to beginners. Too often I’ve read all these so-called experts with their opinions about how to begin a training regimen and their advice is often from the point of view of an ‘expert’ rather than from the standpoint of the beginner.

My advice is simple and taken somewhat from the late Raiders owner Al Davis. If you want to be a runner: Just run, baby! I consider ‘Just run, baby!’ to be the Kenyan method of running. Do I think Kenyans messed around with all these fancy training programs that these fitness talking heads try to shove down people’s throats? No. They ran to get where they are. Plain and simple.

I’m not going to sit here and pretend I’m some running champion or even good at it, but I can tell you that in 2.5 years of running I’ve spent exactly zero days on the injury list. There have been times when I’ve had brushes/scares/what-have-yous, so I’ve cooled it down a bit. But, I’ve never been injured. I’ve been lucky and I know that. Injury could happen at any point in time and I know that.

The fancy methods that I’ve never tried and, knock on wood, never will, are all these ‘Hills’, ‘Speed’, ‘Progression’, ‘Insert whatever here’ methods. I have a firm understanding of my limitations and, slowly, day to day those limitations are being raised. Experts seem to think that every Joe Schmoe that wants to be a runner can one day become the greatest to ever lace ‘em up. Which, I often think about running a sub-3 hour marathon, but it’s less a goal than it is just fun to think about. Kinda like thinking about how you would spent $300 million dollars if you won the lottery. The chances for me to win the lottery and run a sub-3 hour marathon are remote, at best. Still fun to think about, though.

I have no real point for this tangent. Just putting words on a highly trafficked blog.