Can’t Make Up My Mind

..but I’m going to. now.

At first, I had my jgorunning.wordpress.com blog, then I decided to consolidate it with just a more general blog (this one) where I could post about other things.

The thing is, anybody that does end up reading this blog (any of it) is not going to care much about the other the stuff.

For that reason, I’m going to resurrect the old jgorunning.wordpress.com site, and furthermore, I will *begin* blogging about running once again.

Along the same lines of not making my mind up, I can’t seem to stay on the running wagon. But things have changed. New job (same landscape as when I did well in running where I can actually get out before lunch consistently), new attitude, new friends from church that are genuinely interested in running and getting better, etc the list goes on. So this is it. I’m getting back on and I’m holding on for the ride. A 2016 3:30 marathon is in my sights.

20141124 Run

4.1mi, 37:05

Another run, another unsaved activity on my Garmin (Fenix 2). I’m not sure what’s going on. The only thing it’s tracking now is just the distance and time, but no tracks. Oh well. I’m going to reset it today.

20141117 Run

9.0mi, 1:32:00, 475ft vertical @ 1% (treadmill)

(for some reason, my watch can’t upload my run – bummer)

9.0mi, 1:31:48, 155bpm (watch)

Just a treadmill run. Watched “Lone Survivor” (amazing movie) during the run. Felt good.

20141112 Run

5.00mi, 46:46 (treadmill stats)

5.14mi, 46:41, 152bpm (watch stats)

It’s about, hmm, zero degrees out, so I decided to ‘mill it today. My watch has several sensors (accelerometer, etc) to measure distances without GPS (it uses historical cadence data, too). As you can see above, it’s fairly close. It definitely seemed like the watch was a little faster.

Pretty good run, but then again, this was a treadmill at 0 incline. I’ll take this with some salt.

20141110-11 Run

1.0mi, 7:09, 171bpm (yesterday)

6.1mi, 56:35, 168bpm (today)

Brrrrr! Two cold runs. I went out yesterday with just shorts, but decently covered upper..but yet, it was still cold. Decided to just run around the neighborhood and do a mile as fast as I could.

Today was also very cold but I tried my best to dress appropriately. 3 upper layers, double gloves, double socks, and under armour bottoms + shorts. It was cold starting out but I settled in and got a bit more comfortable; so I decided to run 6 mi instead. Bad mistake. The wind was behind me so it felt good. After the turn around, that’s when things started to get bad. It wasn’t too bad at first but I definitely felt the frigid head wind. After about a mile, I realized that I couldn’t feel much anymore; including my penis.

I started running with my hands covering my junk just to deflect the wind. I thought it was gonna fall off. It was cold! It was 14 out. When I finally got home, I just undressed all the way and waited for my body’s temp to catch up (before hopping into the shower). It turns out that my toes were the worst off. It took a while for those suckers to warm up; before I could finally feel them again.

On another thought: the 9:16 pace was nice to see.

At any rate…I think I’ll dreadmill next time when it’s that cold!

20141108 Run

4.1mi, 40:43, 155bpm

I was able to get out and get a run in, today. W0ot! It was just an easy run, and pretty much kept my HR pretty low.

Got 4 runs in this week: 27.33mi

20141107 Run

7.1mi, 1:06:46, 164bpm, 178spm
Splits: 10:39, 8:20, 9:50, 8:21, 10:05, 8:26, 10:26
HR: 165, 167, 152, 169, 158, 174, 168

I loved this run. It was a nice and cool 55 degree, overcast weather, today. Just perfect.

I suppose this is kind of like doing intervals, but not in the traditional sense with shorter rest periods. I just alternated effort on each mile. I originally was just going to run 6mi, but felt so damn good at mile 3 that I decided to do 7. Part of this decision was due to the fact that final mile is this tiny hill that I didn’t really want to attack with a past pace (if I were to keep up with the alternating intervals).

It was great to test my body’s recovery, too. And it seemed it was doing quite well, which actually fed my confidence during the run. I’m sure it didn’t help that the weather was just perfect today.

Added a little kick for the final 0.1mi. That felt great at a 6:08 pace. I feel like my body is starting to turn a corner and just loving it!

I’m going to try to get another run in, but right now, I’m at 21.3mi on the week. Maybe I’ll wake up early tomorrow to get it in.

20141104 Run

10.1mi, 1:45:03, 159bpm

2.0mi, 36:45

This was supposed to be a 12mi run. I just couldn’t muster up the final two miles (hence the 2-mile walk back). Let’s just say that’s a cooldown. Oh well. I’ll try again next week.

Everything felt good and looked good; I just had my watch on the Heart Rate page and tried to stay within limits. At first, it was low 150s, and obviously this started to creep towards the upper 150s. The wheels started to come off after turning around; around mile 7-8. Heart rate started to stick within mid-160s. As much as I dialed things back, it never recovered below 160.

I blame the Halloween candy.

Anyways, I’m not too bummed about this. I just know that my fitness level and jumping up 17% in long distance isn’t probably quite the right ratio just yet. Which reminds me of this quote:

“Just keep on swimming”
~Dori

cya.

App Feedback

Some of you may know that I’ve developed and published a fantasy sports app for Windows Phone 8.1. The download count has been steadily going up in the last few weeks and update to 24 as of yesterday.

Today, I received my first feedback: a 1-star! Doh! The reason for this post is because the one thing that I love about the Windows Phone platform is that it allows developers to respond to feedback. In this case, I wanted to get in touch with the user to dig deeper into the issue (which he graciously provided in his feedback).

So, after replying to his feedback (from the Dev Center), I was able to get to the bottom of the issue. He hasn’t updated his rating, and I’m not going to force him to. That’s on his own prerogative… but it was great to be able to do that!

Score one for Microsoft.

20141103 Run

4.1 mi, 38:13, 173 bpm, 178 spm

Bleh…I was going to do a longer run today; somewhere in the neighborhood of about 8-10. I postponed from going earlier because of the freezing rain, and when it finally let up, I got ready to go. I totally forgot I had bundles of twigs to set out for the trash, so I did that for a bit (in my running gear). While doing that, I realized that it was much chillier than I thought.

Basically, once I set out for my run, I decided to make this quicker; “get out, get in”. I’ll do my long run tomorrow. The sun started to poke through 1.5mi in. After my turn around, I saw a guy about 50 feet away joining me on my path. He later caught up to me but I was consciously trying to keep up a decent pace prior so he wouldn’t pass me. By the time he passed me, I was hovering around low-to-mid 8’s. I venture he was doing 8’s. He looked comfortable. I miss when that used to be me. Oh well.

Alright, shooting for a 100mi November. I might have to double up on some days, but we’ll see.