Training in San Diego: The Good and The Challenging

Hello from the West Coast!  I'm in San Diego for the week to help welcome my brother's first child into the world.  It would of been nice to take a week off from work and training but unfortunately that isn't the case.  There is no rest from marathon training.  Its a half a year commitment!  The most I'm changing with my current routine is my marathon training diet (and of course, sleep, once the baby gets here).  I have to have In-N-Out while I'm here right?!

The Good

Its been nice to have a little break from the crazy humidity of Virginia.  But staying with my Brother and Sister-in-law definitely have other perks:

My home away from home for the week.

The view outside of the pad.  Wait.  What is that behind the gate?

Is that a lap pool just 20 feet away?  Why yes!  I believe it is!

The Challenging

With the combination of struggling through Tuesday's 8-miler and traveling all morning on Wednesday I thought it would be best to give the legs a break on Wednesday.

I woke up early Thursday morning and decided to try out the local roads for a brief 4-miler.  I went over to the USATF site and mapped out a quick run.  I knew the neighborhood we were in was on the side of a hill, but I remembered, "hills are your friend".

I came out of the neighborhood and took this first right, and started my run down the hill.  Not too bad so far.

Most of mile one was down hill so I thought, no problem.  I knew I was going to have to run back up but on the way down the hill was so steady I figured it wouldn't be too much of problem.  I felt so good that I decided that I would take a parallel path back up the hill to finish up my run.  Big mistake!  This is the BEAST I encountered at mile 2.5.

I know hills are our friends, but what about mountains?  This climb was insane!  I really wanted to stop and walk at the top of it.  I powered through, but after a quarter mile I got another shocker.  I was going downhill again!

After some personal motivational talk (most of which can't be repeated here) I eventually finished up the remaining inclines and my run.  Overall, it was a good time.  I'd have to say that I felt more challenged than when I did my Half.  I'm sure the benefits will outweigh the sheer torture I put my body through.

I still have to do a 10, a couple of 8s and a couple of 4s while I'm here, but its safe to say I'll be avoiding the BEAST.

Just for kicks, here's the elevation profile of yesterday's grueling run:

Work on Your Strategy Already!

I went out for an 8 miler yesterday morning and by the time I got to mile 5 my legs were dead.  I could of used the excuse that I had just run a Half on Saturday.  Or that I didn't allow any rest for my legs on Sunday (I actually played a little football and did a half mile in the pool).

The truth is, after my race I decided to splurge on junk food and have some taco bell, movie theater popcorn, and soda.  What's the big deal about all that?  I mean we're doing these long distances so we can eat whatever what we want, right?  Wrong!

For the past six months, while training, I've figured out what does and does not work for my body.  I've tweaked my diet and determined the amount of sleep I need to have a good run.  If I don't at least follow these habits then my run is just about guaranteed to blow up.  I'm amazed how many people haven't figured this out.  That's half the point of the training!  It's like they're just asking to bonk on race day.

So how about it guys.  Have you figured out what routine/habits works best for you?  (I know there's only a handful of you, but I'm sure you've got excellent information to share!)

Figuring Out Blogging

This is a comic from xkcd that appeared a couple of weeks ago.  I found the strip to be particularly funny because on the very day I saw it, I had considered doing yet another blog post that apologized for never updating.

What's even funnier is that at the time I only had one follower and she was my cousin.  So even if I wrote that post, at most only two people would be reading it.  For me, that was a make or break moment for this blog.  I had to get back to the roots and figure out why I was doing this in the first place.  What I found was rather surprising.

For one, I realized that I'm a web newb.  Not in the sense that I just started using the internet but in the sense that I never really picked up the social power behind using the web.  I've been on the web for over 10 years and I just figured that out?!  I've never really used forums, done online gaming, or met random people online (via chatrooms, social networking, etc).  What's worse is that I have a computer science degree.   For some crazy reason I excel at face to face communication but when it comes to social interaction I'm like one of the shyest guys on the net.  Its like I'm some kind of Bizarro Computer Scientist.

The other thing I realized that at no point during the lifetime of this blog or my other currently stagnant blog did I ever really think about why I did blogging in the first place.  That's crazy!  It's one thing to do a proof of concept really quickly but you eventually got to iron out the details.  I haven't 'ironed out the details' for like four years!

So I decided that I needed to think a little about this blog.  Think about whether it made sense for me to just scrap the whole thing or to actually commit to blogging.  I even did a google search for "blogging beginner".   I found the post, 23 Questions for Prospective Bloggers - Is a Blog Right for You which covers just about everything you should consider before you start blogging.

So with that, I'd like to announce the relaunch of Caveman Ramblings.  I'll still be talking about random things but the focus will be on how I try to live an overall healthy lifestyle.  More to come on this soon!

UPDATE: I now have two followers, so we're about to rock this thing out!