Moving the blog

Moving to use wordpress for my blog. Your feeds should keep working but to view the new blog, here's the url: http://austinmetronome.wordpress.com/

Marathon training for the next 12 weeks

We had a team meeting for Team Rogue after our run this morning. People ran between 14 and 20 miles today, 20 for the people that started in their Lydiard phase earlier. This is two weeks into the official program. Steve, Karen and Ruth (the coaches) shared an overview of the training and also some of the cool perks of being part of Team Rogue ... I just like the sound of that ... Team Rogue.

The Team Members
Steve started us off by having everybody share their name, coach, goal time and race. It was interesting to see the different goals for all the marathon runners. The majority of people were of course training for the California International Marathon, which will be fun since that's going to be a huge group of Austin runners going for that Marathon. There were people trying to run a 2:30 to 3:59:59 so it'll be a fun tie over the next 22 weeks.

Steve's Passionate Explanation
Having trained with Rogue for going on 4 years I'm always impressed with how Steve can people excited about their training, their goals and to believe they can do it ... as long as they focus and stay committed. One of the exciting things about this new program was the new approach Steve is having us take for this training season based on his experience training over the last few years and his running and reading about running since he was 6 ... that blows my mind sometime, running since he was 6. Steve shared the standard info about the impact of Aerobic and Anaerobic conditioning, the thing that was really different from previous programs is that for this group Steve is focusing a lot on the Lydiard model. Other Rogue programs and most marathon programs have a lot of multi-pace training, this time round we're starting with a 14 week base Lydiard base phase and will have some interesting runs planned including 30 mile runs and some interesting 25 mile runs with miles all out mixed in. I'm definitely looking forward to the challenge.

Karen and Ruth on The Cool Perks of Being in Team Rogue
There are definitely some cool perks to being part of the Team Rogue program.

1. Karen has arranged a block of rooms at a hotel for us take advantage of, I think we should rename it Hotel Rogue for the weekend!
2. We'll be able to take advantage of the yoga classes at the Rogue Annex next to the Rogue Equipment running store.
3. We'll be able to purchase, for a really good price, 2 sets of uniforms. Better yet we'll get to vote on the colors. Now I have to say usually the Rogue gear looks pretty cool so our votes better live up to the past coolness of Rogue gear.
4. Strength training with Mark at South Congress Gym.

All in all I'm genuinely excited about this new marathon training program. Now I need to think about sucking it up and running the marathon with everybody instead of running a half ... let's see how that internal struggle goes.

Breakfast of champions?

I mentioned earlier that I'm being very conservative about the build up with Team Rogue to reduce the chance of injury. Ok along with that there's the stupid little things like making sure you eat enough, hydrate, get enough rest to not get sick with the increased workload. So I thought I'd attach pictures of part of my "breakfast this morning":

- 1 multi-vit and 1 ecanaica to try and not get sick
- 2 advil, to reduce the inflammation in this phase
- claritin D, it rained so preempting allergy onset

Am I proud of all this, well not really. But I also did eat some dark chocolate, you know antioxidants, ok to be honest I just like chocolate. And no this isn't all I have for breakfast, today was a palmier (cookie) & oj. On the weekends it's all about waffles or french toast with fruit ... and whipped cream. I do believe in a balanced diet after all, can't leave the dairy out.

Why running 8 easy miles "Easy" is important

Steve Sission at our workout today for Team Rogue reminded us about the importance of running easy in out base phase and started describing "rythm" which I try and describe but don't do justice.

Mobile post sent by kamrans using Utterz.  Replies.  mp3

When increasing your workload by 10% a month isn't enough

We've all heard, and rightly so not increase our "workload" too much in one go. I don't know what the exact numbers are but I'm saying 10% per month for now, that includes the intensity, duration and frequency as factors. Since last summer all three of those for me have been pretty pathetic. I was looking at my training log and I was doing at most 20 miles in a given week, averaging 15 since the beginning of this year. So I was thinking, I just started up with Team Rogue
and we're supposed to be around 70 miles or so in 14 weeks. So doing the math 15 + 10% + 10% + 10% ... please forgive the error in compounding but it's close enough is like 20 miles a week. So that's not working so I just bumped up to 45.

Now joking aside even with a decent base previously it's easy to think our bodies are where they were a year or two ago and they just aren't. For me I've got a lingering sore spot in my left calf, the beginning of shin splints in the left foot and beginnings of planter in the right. I'm sure there's something else but I just don't feel it. So my approach has been to ramp up but be very careful about the speed and also being religious about using the TP Massage ball almost everyday, swapping out the elliptical for some runs right now to get the time in and then gradually replace those with running which is higher impact. Will this relative conservative appraoch to coming back into fitness work ... we'll just have to wait and see.

Joe Prusaitis "The Loop" Trail Race Director

Joe Prusatis the race director of "The Loop 30k" trail race at Emma Long Park in Austin, TX shares his thoughts on the changed course, the weather and the strategy of the men's 30k winner Paul Terranova. The Loop is the second in the 3 part Rogue Trail Series which is in it's 5th year.

Mobile post sent by kamrans using Utterz.  Replies.  mp3

Leilani shares thoughts on the Loop's new route

Leilani of Rogue Training Systems ran the 10k version of the Loop and managed to tumble 3 times. She shares her thoughts on the new route which she thinks is harder than last time but David Grice was heard saying the course was easier and to paraphrase ... "Leilani is smoking ..."

Mobile post sent by kamrans using Utterz.  Replies.  mp3

Danno ... the 10k trail race that ended at 3k

Long time smack talker Danno had a tough day today twisting his ankle. He was in good spirits but the pain was evident even with the beer. Listen to him share his experience. Right after this interview Danno made it over to the finish line and soaked his foot (shoe included) in the tub of ice being used to make ice packs for the finishers!

Mobile post sent by kamrans using Utterz.  Replies.  mp3

Paul Terranova "The Loop 30k" Trail Race Winner

Paul Terranova won "The Loop" 30k, the second in the 3 part Rogue Trail Series in Austin, TX. Paul was in 5th after 2 loops of the 30k course at Emma Long Park but his consistency paid off as the weather got warmer and he starting picking people off to finish first in a well run race.

Mobile post sent by kamrans using Utterz.  Replies.  mp3

Cost of races in Austin

The latest issue of Austin Runner has an article discussing the increasing cost of racing in Austin. There are a few interesting things there, one of them was the increasing use and requirements for barricades. In recent races the last year I've also noticed just more barricades at each intersection. I think I'm more inclined to agree with John Conley's sentiment about making the requirements really meet the needs and not just add barricades for the sake of adding barricades.

The other thing that struck me as odd was that the City's solution to keep costs low is to have city workers do the barricading of the events. How does that impact the businesses that make their living with barricading? Something about the City increasing barricading requirements, which raises the costs for the barricading companies and then coming back with an option that cuts out those companies if the City does the barricading donsn't quite make sense to me. Why not just keep the rules simple and the overhead low and streamline the process for the local businesses involved so they can keep the costs low since this is the core of the business.