So it came down to money, training, and priorities as it often does in life.  With the Vegas trip having fallen so close to the Rock and Roll Half Marathon in Virginia Beach this weekend the strain was more than the wallet could bear.  So ive taken a step back to look at the long term goals and with this season being all about training for the Livestrong Challenge in Austin Ive decided to drop the 1/2 marathon in favor of the MS 150 bike ride in New Bern.  The ride will fall on my next paycheck, be cheaper travel, and prepare me for the 100 miles in Austin moreso than running will.  It sucks to eat it on the registration of the marathon but thats the way it goes sometimes.

The MS 150 is in New Bern and consists of two days of 75 miles a piece, with an option of 100 miles each day.  Im planning on pulling the 75 the first day to see how things shake out as it will be a long ride and if things go well ill pull 100 on the second day.  It’ll be a good training ride for the Livestrong Challenge and give me an idea of where Im at currently.  Since the ride is so close to the coast it will be an almost completely flat course with the wind being the main concern.

The updates have been off this past week because I’ve been getting ready for and travelling to Las Vegas.  Im actually still in Vegas at the moment waiting on my delayed flight back.  Ill be hitting the road hard in the next week or so to undo all the damage of this Vegas trip.  It basically feels like Ive been eating for four days straight, the upside is I probably averaged five miles a day walking.

Since Vegas brings one’s mind to gambling this would be a good point to recap this months poker tournament fundraiser.  It was a fairly big one in relation to the past few in that there were 12 participants.  A couple of which were new players and ones that havent been in quite a while.  This month I out drew players at a few key points to allow me to win the overall.  Winning was doubly good because I put all my winnings back into the charity pot minus my buy-in.  So this months tournament raised $160 for my Livestrong Challenge.

My friend Ron is currently working on locking up our travel plans to Austin.  We’re running a little late in planning so hopefully it wont bite us in the wallet when we finally book.

Got on the road yesterday and did a 17 mile ride at an average of 18mph.  Dont know if they have Fartleks for biking but that would be the best description of how I rode.  I did a lot of alternating between sitting and standing in hopes of keeping my speed high for the entire ride.  Basically I rode normally till I started to feel a hill getting to me, and this was completely by feel so cant describe more.  If I felt myself slowing more than I liked Id pump the gears up a couple, stand up, and power through the hill till I was either at the top or my legs died.  Luckily the former happened more than the latter.

Yesterday was also my first ride in the rain.  Luckily it was a short drizzle right at the start which passed quickly.  When i got my bike back on my car and drove back to town everything was soaked, puddles everywhere, and full gutters.  Looked like I was riding on the edge of the storm but home got the brunt.  Im glad I got out there before that happened because normally Id have looked out the window, saw the rain and decide not to go whereas this time where I ride would’ve been nice and clear.  Makes me wonder how often that happens.

So yesterday I did another Fartlek run, yep a fartlek.  Still fun to say.  Did my normal four mile run but this time i reversed my course to change things up.  Its a good idea to mix up the run but the timing was bad to do it on the fartlek.  Doing my course backwards changed my run from several long gradual climbs to several short steep ones which had the speed portion fall upon more often than not.  I kept the run 60 seconds fast followed by three minutes normal after a half mile warmup.  In the end it wasnt a measurable time increase from when I did my normal run tuesday.  I attribute that to the difficulty in the hills.

This morning I was up early enough to hit the gym and get on the stationary bike.  Its not comparable to being on the road, a comparison ive talked about in other entries, but at least its something.  I did a relaxing pace of 15.5 miles in 45 minutes keeping my heart rate just inside my aerobic zone.  I found that the time moves fairly quickly if you can manage to perch a magazine on the bike’s handlebars and read while pedaling.
So two days in a row of getting in some preperation for the Livestrong Challenge ride in Austin.  I had to get my exercise in this morning because tonight will be this months poker tournament.  Its looking like there will be a dozen players which will be the most players in a single tourney in quite a while.  Ill post how it goes in the next day or so.

So ive been a bit slack this past week on the updates so Ill fill in the blanks today.

Last Thursday I did a Fartlek run, a lot funner to say than do.

Per CoolRunnings.com

“Fartlek” is Swedish for “speed play” and consists of bursts of speed in the middle of a training run. Essentially, it’s an unstructured interval session, the track without the rules. Fartlek gets your legs used to a variety of paces and in the process gives you an enhanced awareness of your ability to keep up those paces at various distances.

I made the run a bit more structured than the definition above by doing 60 seconds of a faster pace and three minutes of my normal pace. I figured the discrepancy in terrain would make the distances traveled vary enough to be good enough. Basically the goal is to increase the speed of your runs and I’ve been plateaued for the past few months at about 9:30 per mile. The run was quite a bit harder than normal but Im still riding the Booty wave and feeling good when im exercising so was able to push through it and finished with a pace of about 8:45 per mile. A definite speed increase and that pace was even with a block of walking when one of my fartleks fell on a pretty mean hill that hurts even on my normal run. All in all Ill definitely be putting at least one fartlek run into my weekly rotation.

Monday was another soccer game which went pretty well. We hung in the game the entire time with only one bad few minute span. We gave up 3 goals in about 2 and a half minutes but take that one span away and we were tied the whole night. I even got in a couple goals as well as another friend Creed with two. The second half i burned out a bit but I attribute that to trying to eat dinner before playing. Any time i eat before a game I dont perform well no matter how far in advace I eat.

Yesterday was my normal four mile run and was a suprising one. I dont know if I can attribute it all to the fartlek run of last week but i did a great pace of around 8:20 a mile. That pace is rivaling where i was before tearing up my ankle in May, probably even better since ive become more exact in measuring my pace than i was back then. Before I didnt account for times spent out of my zone and just divided the time in my zone by 4 miles which left out those times on hills or bad days where i was outside my zone and thus not measuring my time fully.

That brings the blog back up to date. Ill be doing a bike ride today, either stationary or on the road depending on what comes up for dinner.