Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Belated Halloween post.




Yeah, I've been meaning to get on here and post on Halloween. But with daylight saving time, its getting dark earlier and getting workouts is getting harder. This will be my 1st winter working regular dayshift in about 14 years, so I'm still adjusting. But I like it, I'm getting more sleep than I have since, well, since I was a lazy 20 year old lying around working P/T and going to school. It just requires more attention to detail, getting out the door immediately when I get home from work, so I'm not running in the dark.

So we ran the Lakefront Discovery run on Oct 31st, my 1st time, and it was a BLAST! Many, many runners dressed up in crazy costumes, which I will do next year, this will be an annual event for us now! We shot a few pics before the start, here is out little group standing out (freezing) in the parking lot at the War Memorial Center in Milwaukee:

Note, my buddies wife Kimmy wearing the donkey head for the run. It was actually a Democratic party type head piece, but she covered up the party symbols so there would be no talk of politics, but I'll go into that more later on, in another post...Also note Amy Jo's (center) devil costume, she had red contacts in, when I jumped in the car at the park n ride lot to carpool to the race, I did a big double take when I said "Hey, how's it going?", and was then like, Holy Crap, WTF??? Freaky, they looked real!

So I ran it with intentions of 1) running the 15k and 2) running like a madman for a good time.

Well, based on the fact that my youngest got sick in the middle of the night, and my wife had to drop out at the last minute to stay home, I decided to run the 5k so I could get back home a bit faster, in case the little Turkey has to go to the DR, yeah, on Halloween. So, 5k, I think to myself, thats OK, I can jam it and go for a PR. Well, the start was a little congested, well, actually it was a lot congested. So we had to run around people, jump between people, even run up in the median, which was lumpy and bumpy. So, I quickly eschewed the hopes for any PR, even though we started out at a great 7:30ish pace. But I figured I'd run the whole way with my buddy Bob, and see what kind of time we got.

Our pace slowed a bit, as my bud got side "stitches", those lovely cramps you get where you feel like you're getting stabbed with a dull instrument in the side. But, there was hope, as we rounded a corner near the Summerfest grounds along the lakefront-low and behold they were serving BEER along the race route! So, of course, I stopped for a tapper and brought it with to "sip" until the finish. And finish we did, with a quasi-respectable time of right around 27 min flat (might be off 10-15 seconds, I forgot to start my Garmin during the initial confusion!).

So, we finish, have a few cookies and a bottle of h2o and wait for the girls to get in. Once they arrive, we head down the block to the Milwaukee Ale House, where they are serving, yep you guessed it, free BEER on tap. So we have a few beers, chat it up with some other racers, there were a bunch of Tri racers at this run, I guess they run it every year. I think the name of their club is the Tri Donkeys, they've got their own kit and all, pretty cool. I might have to race with them and join up in 2010.

Post run, back home

Group Shot!


Some of our costumes, particularly mine and Beck's were pretty great, but bordered on disturbing!!!

Here are our great neighbors, Peg and Paul, they are the best! Note Paul's and my matching teeth...

One of our kids with Bob and Kim's kids, they're such buds!


So Halloween was a great time, and afterwards, I took a few days off here recently to rest up and wind down the season. But, I had to keep the break short. The bottoms of my feet, my left foot in particular, were starting to get sore after mid length runs (like a 10k, for instance). Well, I went out to Performance Footwear in Brookfield, and bought a new pair of running shoes. A great store, small, but very friendly, knowledgeable staff, with a treadmill and camera system to take video of your stride and foot landing placement. I went with a pair of Aasics Gel Nimbus 11, size 11.5 in a EE width. Turns out, I've probably been running in too narrow of a shoe, after an ill fitting at another "high end" running store near where I work. I won't be going back there...

So far, so good with the new shoes. I've got about 21 miles on them, and I ran a post work 5k tonight, as it was getting darker (dusk), and it was COLD. I didn't wear a hat or my gloves, so I was freezing by the time I hit the end of my street. I think this made me want to run faster, which I wanted to start doing anyways! This wasn't quite an interval run, but still pretty quick. I ran it in 23:34, and kept the HR reasonably in check. Tomorrow AM, I'm hitting the weight room at work, by 6am. I work inside tomorrow, so I've got a few extra minutes to get a workout in.

My next post, might be titled "Goals". Thats right, goals for the winter training season. What I want to concentrate on, what I want to improve on, what races I'm leaning towards for 2010. The weight room is one of those goals, so I might as well get started.