Saturday, May 31, 2008

OD'ed in the sun today.

I decided to sleep in today which meant sleeping til 06:45 and then moving to the couch and waiting and waiting for Glenn to get up- which he did around 07:30.

I finally got around to going out for my 12 miler around 12:00 in 89* temps. I ended up cutting the run off at 9 miles- I just couldn't do another 3 knowing I still had 3 hours of edging/weed eating/mowing to do.

I went back home after 9 and got started on yard work. 3 hours later finally done. I went to take a shower and decided to get on the scales- 9 lbs of water weight loss- wow!! While in the shower I came as closee to passing out as I have in a long time. I saw stars, got very very dizzy. I ended up grabbing the rail and sitting down for 5 minutes.

I think after a good nights sleep and lots of gatorade everything will be fine. I need to remember I am not 23 any more and I can't do anything I want!!

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

I don't know if the other GA runners have been affected like me but I have really noticed the humidity the last couple of days. I ran this past weekend in warm weather but it seemed the humidity wasn't too bad. However, yesterday I ran at lunch and it was 82 degrees and high humidity- I was soaked and drained of energy when I was done. This morning I decided to run before work and it was only 71 degrees and 94% humidity. I actually got very nauseas this morning. I normally don't really have a problem with the heat/humidity- I like heat! Hopefully this is just an adjustment period and all will be fine in a day or two.

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

The week finsished up well with a nice 4 mile run (with out my watch) on Saturday morning before heading up to the lake. On Sunday I ended up running mid afternoon. I didn't know how the run was going to go because I went to the Lake Hartwell dam to run- i.e.- no shade and 82*. I ended up running some of the hilly roads around the dam and then the ran the dam once for a total of 9 miles. The run was awesome. I felt great the entire run. That gave me 28 for the week- a nice cut back week.

Mon- No run
Tues- 6 miles
Wed- 4.5 miles
Thurs- 4.5 miles
Fri- no run
Sat- 4 miles
Sun- 9 miles

Total- 28 miles

Friday, May 23, 2008

After having a few weeks of good mileage build up I decided I was ready for a recovery week. I wasn't really sure exactly what I would do and was just kind of going by feel. I took my Monday rest day. On Tuesday I went out not knowing what I was going to run and ended up going 6 miles. My legs were tight and tired before and after the run but loosened up great during the run. I ran a pretty hard 4.5 miles on Wednesday followed by a moderate effort 4.5 on Thursday.
I am leaving for Lake Hartwell tomorrow and will be at the lake house through Monday. I am looking forward to getting some running done at the lake and then relaxing with a book and hanging out.

Hope everyone has a great/safe/relaxing Memorial Day weekend!

Monday, May 19, 2008

Strong week of training. It is starting to feel better and better.

Mon- usual rest day
Tues- 6 miles
Wed- 6.5 miles
Thurs- 6.25 miles w/ 3X1600M repeats
Fri- usual rest day
Sat- 12 miles
Sun- 6 miles

Total- 36.75 miles

I was a little tired during the week but once my run started I zoned out to another world and had good runs- even the mess up on the speed work didn't bother me too bad after I was done. What I am most happy about is my long run. I did 12 miles at the pace I was struggling to do 4-6 miles at not too long ago. The run went really well. I made it to about 11.25 miles before I thought "I am getting a little tired." Finished up with a little push on the last part of the 12th mile. The reward was going the running store and getting a new pair of Asics! :) I was going to go with the new 2130's but the color combo they had was just plain ugly! They had one pair of 2120's left and they just happened to be in my size... and on sale.... an added bonus!

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Man- messed up on my speed work session this morning. I was going to copy last weeks work out of 6 miles with 4X800M repeats.

Got up at 4:50 a.m. and went to the track. I started my work out with a 2 mile warm up. Then it came time to get on the track and do the repeats. I took off and got around to the 800M area and my beeping didn't go off to tell my I was at 800M. I sped back up thinking maybe the gps was off a little. Once I got under the light I looked and it said I haf .4 miles left. What????? I kept going and when the alarm went off I realized I was at 1 mile. I stopped and checke dmy work out I had programmed in. Some how it got changed to 4X1600M repeats, not 4X800M.

Being a veteran runner, I knew I should just cancel that work out and program a new one..... but also being aveteran runner I thought, "Hey, just do 1600M (1 mile) repeats and see where you are." I took off for mile #2 repeat and finished it. For the next one I couldn't go as hard and really concentrated on running it where I thought I could run a race for 6.2 miles. Afterwards, I ran a 1.1 mile cool down.

Splits:
Mile 1- 7.28
Mile 2- 7.29
Mile 3- 7.48

I maybe could have pushed harder on mile 3 but I am not ready for work outs of that magnitude yet. When I was doing repeat #2 I could feel the lactate acid building in the legs- haven't felt that in a while- it was pretty nice!!

Monday, May 12, 2008

Another solid week in the books! The plan was to run 6 on Sunday but winds were steady at 22 mph and gusting to 41 mph according to the news. My legs were a little stiff from Sat. Before running my 11 miler I did about 1.5 hours of yard work (mowing/edging/etc). I try to look at that as a nice warm up for my run.

Mon- No run
Tues- 6 miles
Wed- 6.2 miles w/ 4 X 800M repeats
Thurs- 6.2 miles
Fri- No run
Sat- 11 miles
Sun- 4 miles

Total- 33.4 miles

I can feel the conditioning coming back to a certain extent- feels good.

Thursday, May 08, 2008


I haven't worked on my motorcycle all winter and now the weather is great for riding. Hopefully I will get on it this weekend and get some things done so I can get it back out on the road.

Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Today's speed workout.

So I decided that I needed to do more repeats before the race coming up in 3-4 weeks. I was talking Derek (fast running buddy at work) and according to McMillan's running calculator I need to be do 800M repeats in a time of 3:39 - 3:44 according to my "Derek given" goal for the race.

I did 400M repeats for a couple of weeks in April and the first ones were pretty rough but week two of repeats went better- more evenly paces splits. That's one thing I have seemed to do pretty good at - run even splits for repeats or for miles during the run.

This morning I got up at 4:50 and went to the track for a 6 mile run with 4X800M repeats. I almost didn't go because my lazy voice almost talked me out of it.

Anyway- got the track- ran a 2 mile warm up then came the repeats. I took off (relatively speaking) on repeat #1. I thought - "my gosh- this is harder than I remember". Got finished with that one and had a 1 minute recovery. Took off for #2- this one felt better. Another recovery and some water- took off for #3. I am thinking I will skip the 4th one- I am about done. Finish #3 and recover and decide to do the 4th one and just do the best I can. I have no idea what times I am running anyway. After teh 4th repeat I grabbed a quick chug of water and headed out for a two mile recovery.

When I got around to recording my run I had to smile at what I saw.

As I said, my target for the repeats is 3:39 - 3:44. My times for the repeats this morning were:
Repeat 1- 3:40 (7:21 mile avg)
Repeat 2- 3:39 (7:19 mile avg)
Repeat 3- 3:42 (7:26 mile avg)
Repeat 4- 3:44 (7:29 mile avg)

I had no clue I was in that range but I like it!

Monday, May 05, 2008

Since we decided not to go to the lake this weekend I was going to find a 5K to run around the area. I had originally planned on running a 5K in Snellville then saw a post by Tim (a local RA runner) about a race about 15 minutes from where I live.
Due to being up late on Friday night and a lot of work to do Saturday I ended up not going to race- but Tim did... boy- did he ever!

Congratulations to Tim for busting his PR wide open and getting 2nd place overall in the race.

His report is here.

Got back on track this week with training although I didn't get a speed work session in. That really doesn't bother me because I need to get the miles back up before adding speed work anyway, I am basically wanted to do some to remind my body what it feels like to run hard.

Mon- no run
Tues- 5 miles
Wed- 5 miles
Thurs- 6 miles
Fri- no run
Sat- 5 miles
Sun- 10 miles

Total- 31 miles

Thursday, May 01, 2008

Below are two posts from running boards that I was posting to in 2004 when Glenn was born. It is truely a mircale how Glenn came through the problems he had and has developed the way he has. Please do not ever doubt that there is a God that has a plan for us. Glenn is living proof that there is!!

I remember praying over Glenn one night and just offering him to to God and asking Him to help us make teh decisions we needed to make. We had to make some tough decisions while he was in the hospital and only through prayer made the right one.

Reading back over the posts I wrote and other things I have saved in a file makes me feel so insignificant in this life! What a blessed father I am!

Glenn Post 2 (from October 2004):

I think a lot of you remember the post about my son from a few months ago. For some of you newer guys to the boards, here is the thread (thread is below).

I am excited to tell you that Glenn is developing and growing perfectly. He is the happiest little guy- smiling and laughing all the time unless he is hungry or has a dirty diaper. He was supposed to be on one of his meds until he 8 months to 1 year old, and another med until he was 2 ½ years old. He came off of all meds at 5 months old- 2 years ahead of schedule and is doing great.

I am even more excited to tell you that he loves running!!!! I put him in the running stroller and head out and he just hangs out watches stuff go by until he decides to take a nap.

Kathy and I are leaving Thursday to go to Dallas for the adoption finalization that is scheduled for Friday. The state of TX requires the baby to live with the family for 6 months before the adoption can be finalized- so we will sign the rest of the papers Friday. We are going to spend the weekend in Dallas on our first family vacation together and do some of the things we wanted to do while in Dallas before but were not able to due to Glenn’s illnesses.

I never knew the blessings of being a parent- but I have to tell you- it is awesome!!!!

Glenn Post 1 (from April 2004):

Some of you have e-mailed me and asked where I had been since I had been gone from the boards for a while. Thanks for checking in. I thought I would let everyone know what has been going on.

After working with adoption agencies for a almost 2 years and showing our profile to quite a few birth moms, we received a call saying that we were in the final group that the birth mom had chosen. In a couple of days, we were told that we were the ones that the b-mom had chosen to adopt the baby. Let the scrambling begin. All of a sudden everything is turned upside down in my life.

After running around trying to get things we needed, we received a call on a Thursday that a C-section had been scheduled for Friday and we needed to be in Dallas (from Atlanta) on Saturday. More scrambling for hotel and plane reservations, etc.

We arrive in Dallas thinking we would be there for 1 week waiting for the paper work to clear so we could leave the state of Texas with our new son – Glenn Alan Ford.

Plans changed quickly. As it turned out, he was not as developed as they thought at 35 weeks and he had major lung problems. For the first 3 days of his life, he was on a high frequency ventilator, then moved to a regular ventilator, then miraculously healed all together and we were going to leave the hospital on the 9th day of his life.

The day before we were to check out, Glenn took a turn for the worse. His heart started to fail. In the matter of an hour, they had called another hospital that had an excellent Pediatrics Cardiac ICU and they got him and transferred him there.

Once there, it was figured out that he had a small blood clot that had formed and went to his kidney causing kidney failure, which caused the heart to work too hard and eventually fail. As a result of this, his blood pressure sky rocketed causing some swelling in his brain and a small amount of brain damage.

Long story short, he made tremendous improvements and almost 4 weeks after being in Dallas, TX, we checked out of the hospital and returned home Atlanta with my son. He is on some medications to help with some recovery issues and high blood pressure, but the prognosis is good. We won’t know what the result of the brain damage is until he starts to develop motor skills at 6 months old and beyond.

Little Glenn is definitely a miracle and a fighter. He almost died twice in the 1st two weeks of his life and came out of it strong….. hmmm…a marathoner’s spirit huh?

So, that is where I have been for the last while.

This link is to a 13 minute clip about Ryan Shay that is worth watching. This is the clip that appeared on ESPN on 29 April.