"We'll Get There When We Get There!" Mr Incr3dible's journal (comments definitely welcome)

[Mr_Incr3dible]

Over the last few years, I have cut waaaay back on carbs and sweets, but yesterday made it clear just how much I've gotten off them. Went to lunch with my son and we split a thin crust pizza. Even with the thin crust, I did a fair amount of scraping the toppings off and leaving the crust. But I look at it as just some carb loading for my afternoon run.
Then we go to our usual haunt for dinner and one of their specials is ziti. Yum, sounds good, so I get it, and it was pretty good, but boy did it sit like a gut bomb the rest of the evening.
Lesson learned: the weaning off the carbs has been a good thing, and don't venture too far back onto the carbs other than the usual pre-race carb loading. And even the pre-race carb loading has become discomforting mentally, in that I'm having to tell myself that for a few days it is OK to be eating them.
No real point to this other than to hope that someone else benefits from it. Thanks for reading.

 

[Mr_Incr3dible]

We have been having a fairly mild fall here in the North Georgia area, and I signed up for a Thanksgiving half marathon that I thought would be fairly fast and then the night before the race a front came in and race temperature was just above freezing, with windchill down in the 20s. I bundled up and kept my race jacket on the entire time which was good out on the parkway when the wind was blowing. If there hadn’t been the wind, I’ve been fine without the jacket. I was running a really good pace for the first half of the race and then The cold air and the wind got to my lungs and I wound up six minutes shy of my PR, but I finished without injury and got to test my MW costume and wasn’t the last finisher. So win-win-win.

 

[Mr_Incr3dible]

What is worse: forgetting to start your pace watch in the first place, or pausing (like to get a rock out of your shoe) and forgetting to restart it?
I managed to do the latter, noticed it a bit later in the run, cursed out loud and resumed my Garmin. Near as I can tell, I "lost" about 0.7 miles of tracking, but that combined with the 7.34 miles that did get tracked, and I have a long run of just over 8 miles!
And at a 10:56 pace, and on a course with 587 ft of ascent and 490 ft of descent. (FWIW, the "lost" milage was flat to downhill, so I lost some faster pace. Just dang).
It was a beautiful day with a high right around 60, so I got out in it and maximized the experience.
And with the weather about to turn cooler again, this may be my longest run before MW. Yes, a totally half-@ssed training method.
But getting amped up to be there next month.
Thanks for reading.

 

[jmasgat]

I’ve been doing the “fail to restart” a bunch lately. Mostly when I stop for traffic, but for a while due to the tighter fit of my winter clothing possibly brushing my touch screen. I turned that off-one less variable. But the maps from those runs are funny as Garmin just drew a straight line to connect the dots and of course they run right through houses, etc. Sort of like a MW nightmare scenario!

I don’t like autopause since it always takes more time than I think is reasonable to stop/restart. But I suppose since I’m just running for fun right now that wouldn’t matter. OTOH I don’t want to give in to Old Lady Brain.

But congrats on the slowly building mileage. At this rate, you should be ready for the marathon in about March or April….oh, sorry, Jan 11.

 

[Mr_Incr3dible]

OCD me went back with the car today to check the lost mileage, and it looks more like .8 or .9 miles, so definitely an 8+ mile run.
The cooler weather and longer run meant my breathing was a bit ragged on Sat, plus I was doing other stuff, which was a shame given the temp in the high 60's. Today (Sunday) should have been another long or long-ish run, but the high was at midnight and temps have dropped since. So temp around 39 after lunch and with the wind chill felt like 29, so I erred on the side of a very brisk walk of 3.1 miles at a 14 min/mile pace, keeping in mind Galloway's admonition that you just about can't go to slow.
Temps coming back up later in the week, so maybe some more 5 and 6 mile runs before Christmas.

 

[Mr_Incr3dible]

I’ve been doing the “fail to restart” a bunch lately. Mostly when I stop for traffic, but for a while due to the tighter fit of my winter clothing possibly brushing my touch screen. I turned that off-one less variable. But the maps from those runs are funny as Garmin just drew a straight line to connect the dots and of course they run right through houses, etc. Sort of like a MW nightmare scenario!

But congrats on the slowly building mileage. At this rate, you should be ready for the marathon in about March or April….oh, sorry, Jan 11.

Oh. That's why there is that straight line on the map. Thanks for letting me know why.

As for being ready for MW: I'll be ready. I'll be part of Team Middlin' Fast and Team Not-so-fast, but I'll be ready.

For reasons I can't explain, I hadn't been all that worked up about MW, but over the last few weeks, I've really started getting amped up and looking forward to it and seeing everyone.

 

[Mr_Incr3dible]

I was able to take advantage of temps in the high 50's yesterday to get in a run of 7 miles, which means my 8 mile run last week is probably my longest long-distance training run, unless one counts the Thanksgiving Half as a training run.
Hmmm, I think I'll count the Half as a training run. Change approved.
Really getting amped up for MW and looking forward to it.
Gads, I'm actually impatient for Christmas, bowl games, and the New Year to get by so that I can go run 39 miles.
Something I never would have imagined....