Downward Spiral

I woke up in the middle of the night a week ago Monday with a terrible sore throat.  The throat is somewhat better, but I still have a nasty cough and a cold of some sort to go with it.  Things have started draining so I hope it's coming around, but it's all but terminated any thoughts of training over the last week.

Thursday, prior to the last snow, it was warm(er), clear skies, and no wind.  I forced myself out on the mountain bike.  It was nice enough to be out, but I was miserable.  Sunday I attempted to run, made it about 1-mile out, turned around and walked home.  Haven't even thought about swimming.

Bad thing about being sick for me, I tend to fall back on old habits.  Habits like say, poor nutrition.  And I'm not talking an occasional slip, we're talking full blown typical overweight lazy American eating habits.  No breakfast, fast food, fried food, ice cream, etc.  Check, I bet Burger King stock is up over the last week.  And now, to top things off, Easter candy.

Sick + bad diet = ambition and energy levels in the toilet. 

The trump card is the weather.  Eight inches of snow the day after I'm out riding my bike.  I'm tired of riding in the basement, tired of wearing every piece of clothes I own to run. I want spring, I want warm, I want to wear shorts and a t-shirt from now until fall, and I will.  Give me 50 degrees and sun and I will all but abandon pants for the next 6-months.

I need something to get me out of this funk.  The 10-day forecast starts to come around next week.  I may just wait and take this week off as well.  We'll see.

Shuffleupagus

Last planned event for a while, the 10k Madison Shamrock Shuffle. Good weather. Hard course. Out and back, the four miles in the middle were as flat as one could ask, and included most of the V-Day course from last week. The first and last miles were hell. Start down State Street, then up and out Observatory Drive. Going out wasn't terrible, coming back, another story. At one point coming back up the hill my heart rate was 187. This is the same hill I'll have to run twice for Ironman Wisconsin, oy.

Mile 1: 8:51 / mile (too fast, thought I slowed it down some, guess not)
From 1 - 3.1: 8:47 / mile ( I don't know how I always miss a mile marker)
From 3.1 - 4: 9:11 / mile (just trying to hold on)
From 4 - 5: 9:24 / mile (good long walk break at last water stop)
From 5 - finish: 8:55 mile (no chance I'm running anyone down, another walk break coming up Observatory as well)

Total Time: 55:40 - 8:59 / mile

Couple interesting facts. First, my time at the turn around today was 31 seconds faster than my 5k time last week. Second, total time today was over 18 minutes faster than the Jingle Bell 10k we did back in December. Who knew running 3-4 times a week for a couple of months could lead to such improvements?

You can put your hands down.

Good Morning

No, not really.  It's not that I'm not happy with my swim this morning, it's the simple fact that morning workouts suck.

Something about getting up at 5:00am to swim, run, whatever, just doesn't work for me.  I have no problems getting up early if work demands it.  And every now and then a trout in some stream 90 miles away calls and I'll happily get up at 4:00am to go look for him.  I've even been known to leave home at 3:00am to chase pheasants (and the dog) in Iowa.  But swimming, first thing in the morning, not for me.  Running or biking are even less appealing.  I'll take nice warm bed for another hour or so thank you very much.

As training builds over the next months the sad realization is I will need to schedule more of these morning workouts.  Not looking forward to it.  Scheduling and time management are easily the two things I spend the most time thinking about in regard to IM training.  It's hard.

Sub-9??

I did a somewhat impromptu 5k saturday morning to satisfy the first 1/2 of my shave-your-5k challenge over at Half-fast. The event was the rescheduled UW-running club V-Day 5k.

The concept of the challenge is to improve your 5-k time over the next 8-months or so, i.e. slow time now, fast time later. Sandbagging is apparently not my forte, cause I ran faster than I've ever run before.

Race morning was cold, maybe 10 degrees F, but the sun was out and there wasn't much wind. Maybe 150 runners so not much congestion at the start. Except for maybe 1/4-mile in the middle, the course was also clear of ice and snow. This is how it shook out.

First 1/2 mile: 9:30 / mile pace
there to 2-mile mark: 9:17 / mile pace
there to end: 8:20 mile / pace

Total race time: 27:49 - 8:58 / mile pace

The first time I broke 11:00 per mile was 2/1. I figured it was a fluke, error in measuring the distance or something. It took me 3 weeks to break 11 again. On 3/1 at the Bock Run I broke 10 per mile for the first time. I havn't come close to doing it again, until of course yesterday.

Now the bar is set at sub-9. I don't know how much faster I can go. Sub-8 seems crazy, that's almost fast.