Covering Ground

Good week training wise. 52 miles vs. weekly goal of 54, 8:36 average pace. Right on target. Week 7 of the program, 18 weeks to go until race day. First week running quality sessions since before Vegas last December. All told felt pretty good. Funny how after a long stretch of base training all you want to do is run faster until a few sessions show up in the training calendar and then all of a sudden maybe easy running doesn't seem like such a bad idea. Just nerves though and legs felt good. Session
Following Daniels elite marathon plan with a few adjustments. Daniels recommends that only elite athletes use the mileages listed and that everyone else adjust the plan and run for time rather than distance with one mile being 'worth' a certain amount of time depending on the intensity: 1 mile easy equals 6 minutes running, 1 mile at threshold = 5 minutes, etc.
When I calculated total mileage using this formula I wasn't going to put in enough miles on my long runs to prep me for Boston. So, I have kept the easy miles as actual miles and substituted time goals for milage run at other intensities: M pace, T pace, etc. That way days that are just long easy runs I'll still get the mileage but when quality is added to a day I won't run over suggested mileage caps for intensity and will hopefully keep myself from injury and over-training.
First quality session of the week was before I figured out how I was going to adapt the program: 12 minutes Easy
30 minutes Marathon pace
4:45 minutes Threshold pace
25 minutes M pace
4:45 T pace
12 minutes Easy
I'm going to try and remember to wear my HR strap on the quality days just for curiosity sake.

Second quality session was more straightforward:
12 minutes Easy
6 miles Tempo
12 minutes Easy
Felt good. Workout called for 8 miles and I could have ran a couple more but wanted to keep the total tempo mileage under/close to 10% of weekly miles. At 6 miles I was already a little over.

More fun this week including some interval work tomorrow AM.

On the music front, I've been hearing a ton of covers popping up lately. I'm on the hunt for a good quality version of a Death Cab cover I've been hearing a lot lately and if I find it I'll post it. Until then, here are two very different takes on the same song. Bonus points if you know which is the original.
Merry Christmas.

Mo-vember/Training update

A couple of pics of my costume from the Mo-vember wrap up party. Our team ended up raising about $1000 for prostate cancer research. Thanks to everyone for their support.
The wrap up party was at a club in Chinatown called Fortune Sound Club. I walked into the line and the girl in front of me turned and said" When you were coming up the street all I could think was 'Oh, I hope that mullet isn't real'". Best compliment ever. It's a bit disturbing how real it looks and how much I enjoy wearing it...




And beneath the Canadian tuxedo, my new favorite shirt.


Training is going well. I'll end the week close to 50 miles and begin adding faster
efforts next Wednesday.
Weekly schedule will look like this initially:

M-Easy
T- Off
W- Key workout 1
Th- Easy
F-Easy
Sa-Easy
S-Long/Key workout 2

Hopefully, the rest day wont leave me feeling dead legged for the week's second key workout. The way my week sets up with work and family doesn't leave a lot of wiggle room to change things around.
Monday is 18 weeks until Boston. We've rented a room in a B&B across the water in Cambridge for our accommodations. We've got a room on the third (top) floor seperated from the rest of the units. Pretty pumped that we'll have the ability to do our own cooking and won't be held hostage by the hotels and their overpriced menus.
The suite is about 1M from the finish/shuttle areas and very close to the subway line. Local transit passes are $16 per week and include unlimited subway travel and access to the innrer harbour ferry. We're there for a week and I can't wait to check out the city. This time, unlike Vegas last year, we're flying in just before the race and staying for a few days after. Super pumped. Maybe check out a Bruins game, who knows. Never been to the Eastern seaboard. I'll probably swim in the Atlantic just in case I never get back there.

This one's for Gunner

Crazy hipsters

What is going on in Europe?!?!?!?!

I expect crazy things from Europe, with its 28% beers and its cigarette smoking infants, but this is off the chain redonk. North American Hipsters: you've been put on notice by unitard wearing German teen girls. And you thought a track stand was cool....

My Co-workers are Sweet

That dude, Derek, works with me here at the CU. He's actually the guy who replaced me in my last role after I got promoted. He's a funny kid and is helping raise awareness and funds for Mo-vember. Here's a photo: Derek and I in our Halloween costumes at work on Saturday. Yeah, his costume is what you think it is. I was flattered. I'm either the best assistant manager or a total tool.

Man in Mo-tion

Super pumped to have things back up and running here at our place. Literally and figuratively. Internet connection is fixed, the blog is back from the dead and with 23 weeks today until Boston training is ramping up. The next three weeks will be daily easy runs bringing the mileage up to about 50 miles per week and where I go from there will depend on how things feel over the next few weeks. If legs feel good then we'll throw some long runs in the mix for the next few weeks before starting some faster efforts.
I had a good chat with Jamie yesterday about training and how I can structure my days/weeks/plan so that the demands on family time don't get out of hand. It's great that she's behind me and committed to helping make this work. Thanks Jamie! Do you think the Boston vacation has something to do with it? I wonder how supportive she would be if I planned a destination marathon to Alaska...
Halloween was a good time. One of my colleagues at work dressed up as 'Ward'. It was a pretty great costume and I was flattered. I'll post a pic this week.
The girls gathered up a pile of loot from the neighbours. Surprisingly, Violet has sort of forgotten aboutthe big bag of candy. Jamie on the other hand.....


Other than serious training, something else started this weekend: Movember. For those of you who aren't in the know, Movember is the month formerly known as November where men and women join forces to raise awareness and money for prostate cancer research. The campaign tag line is 'Changing the face of Men's health' and with a name like Mo-vember, I'll bet you can guess how awareness is raised: That's right, folks, mustaches. Lot's of mustaches. So, over the next several weeks please be warned that it's not going to be pretty around here. Those of you expecting a Lucho-esque flourish of facial hair will be sorely disappointed. Undeterred by my woeful inability to grow hair (or keep the hair I do manage to grow, for that matter) I will be sporting a stashe for the next four weeks. If you want to join the cause, you can swing by http://ca.movember.com/get-involved/ and get going by joining a team, starting a team or signing up as an individual. Ladies, if you love a bro with a mo, you can get involved too in the same way. If you want to join my team, out team name is 'Mo-ving Forward Together' and I'd love to have you.
If you cant join a team but would like to support the cause swing by, donate at the link below and become a Citizen of Movember.



https://www.movember.com/ca/donate/your-details/team_id/46757/


Here's the last time for the next 30 days I won't look like someone who might be married to his cousin. November 1, clean shaven:

Lastly, a few weeks back, Beth from Cali called out for workout songs and this is one that I've been rolling a little the last month or so. Apologies that I've posted three Elliott Brood songs in the last few posts. If you didn't like the last ones, I don't think this one will change your mind. If you did, then you're in for a treat, Either way, listen to the first few bars and tell me that this song isn't the one they use in all those Workopolis commercials.

Inter-noooooooooooo!

I've been without internet access at home basically since my last post. I'm actually adding this from work (shhhh!) just so anyone out there who might actually still be reading this used-to-be-a-training-blog-but-now-is-mostly-a-music-blog-because-the-writer-is-lazy doesn't think that I've torpedoed my training entirely.
Back soon with real posts. The memory card slot in our camera is having problems. If we cant get it warrantied we'll be stuck with just the internal memory. This means 2 things:
1) We'll be shopping for a new camera and
2) I just scored myself a running camera.
Stay tuned.