7/23/14 - Jogging reboot commenced, with 60-sec jogs on the treadmill. I built up to 30 minutes without stopping by mid-August. All on the treadmill. All my family is doing fine and we moved to North Texas back in 2012.
9/14/14 - Did Corporate Challenge 5K, my second time running outside after the jogging reboot. I achieved a pace of 11:54, beating my sub-40 goal handily whilst talking with my friend Bill who had persuaded me to go ahead and knock out a 5K. (Hadn't gone that far either.)
9/27/14 - Did this 5K solo with my Walkman MP3 Player, knocking the pace down to 11:05. Spread across exactly 5K, it implies a time of 34:26. (From now on, I will take my pace according to Garmin and spread it across exactly 5K to derive a time.)
I still love bling ... a lot! Here's a picture of the 1.1 ounce Sony Walkman. It's waterproof and people swim in them. It holds 4 GB, which I haven't begun to fill. I thought I'd put a bunch of RPM-specific playlists on there. Instead, I've put mostly progressive rock (Yes, Rush, Genesis) on there and I jog to songs of epic proportions - songs that are twenty minutes long, even. These things are so light, and so in your ear - they don't bounce around and the bass is decent.
10/04/14 - Ran a 5K in the neighborhood where I grew up, at the very middle school I attended in Fort Worth. And with a giant parrot on my head, cause like why not? Got my pace down to 10:34 (32:50) and there were some hills. Still need to beat a 10:23 pace to score a PR, but a very encouraging experience. It was also very interesting to walk around in my old school.
10/11/14 - The Showdown refers to the Texas/OU Weekend in college football. I ran in a TCU shirt to remind OU that they'd fallen to the TCU Horned Frogs the week before. Was that tacky? In any event, it was cold, damp, and windy but it wasn't hilly and I got a PR out of it at a 10:14 pace (31:48). Bill ran this one on his own and got it done in under twenty-eight minutes. He's not a small dude, but he is young and strong!
10/26/14 - This race was close by in McKinney (which is four suburbs north of Dallas). Definitely the hilliest 5K I've done so far with about 380 feet up and 380 feet down. I was very, very surprised that I scored another PR pace at 10:05 (31:20).
Four years ago, I had done a Goblin Gallop in Virginia and my kids did the fun run (left). I talked my kids into doing it again and they both did fine. Max has decided to train for a 5K.
As it's getting colder, and I'm getting faster (and skinnier), I'm continuing to acquire bling. Nike Pro Combat tights are awesome as are Under Armour Evo long sleeve running shirts. For shoes, I'm alternating between Brooks Ghost 7s (pictured) and Saucony something or others.
11/08/14 - Signed up for this 5K at the last minute, on the advice of neighbor Curtis (who had encouraged my to do the Halloween Hustle). This was advertised as a fast, flat course. So I forked over the money. The night before, I'd agonized over spreadsheets and pace calculators that take elevation changes into account, etc. I was going to try and break a ten minute pace. I was prepared to wear the heavy long sleeve tech shirt, but the weather ended up being pretty nice at 52 degrees. So, I wore my skimpy long sleeved tech shirt. Anyhow, a miracle happened and I ran at a pace of 9:22 (29:06). I'm still not sure where this came from ... it's forty some odd seconds per mile faster than the PR two weeks prior. I hadn't even done one mile that fast since basic training thirty years ago. But I'll take it! Below you can see Neighbor Curtis, Co-Worker Bill, and me celebrating (in left-to-right order). We all got PRs that day!
Naturally, given the title of the blog, there has to be some dark cloud on the horizon. This time it is the occasional stab of pain on the outside of the left knee. Usually, with a day or two of rest it's fine again. But I'm going to a doctor before it gets all chronic and discouraging. I did a few miles today at a 10:19 pace with a heart rate in the 140s. My weight is in the 170s and I'm heading for the 160s if I can get there. My jeans are down to 34s. And I'm definitely in better shape now with jogging and weight-lifting and dieting than I've been in many years. If any readers are out there from the old days, I hope you are all doing well! Here's a summary of the 5Ks done so far in what I'm calling the Reboot Era:
I don't know if I'm going to blog much. I started the blog way back when as a mechanism to enforce accountability, to make my little fitness effort larger than life and just as important. These days, for whatever reason, motivation just doesn't seem to be an issue. All in all, I'd say I've become a Level 15 Character!
