Meandering obsessions

Lately, I've been obsessed with web development again. I go through cycles like this.  I'll be going along nicely, and then someone or something will challenge me to write a script that does something useful and helps solve a problem or save a lot of time, and before I know it that's all I can think about. I stay up late at night thinking about it, sneaking off to my desk where I can try out some ideas for different functions I've conceived in stage 1 sleep.

Ordinarily this is ok, but since my time for running is already stressed due to sharing transportation and having a small commute to/from work, and having been sick on top of all this for a while, I've been lagging in behing in the running category.  I nearly hit 2 weeks without running this time around.  The last time that happened was when I had a bad flare of posterior tibialis tendonitis early last year.

I'm really not interested in having such long gaps between running adventures, so I'm planning to try and get out on the road more, or....  Gasp... Use that health club membership and hit the treadmill.

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Heart Center of the Rockies Half/10K/5K

Members of Dailymile, Fort Collins Running Club, and friends

The 2011 Heart Center of the Rockies Half Marathon, 10K, and 5K races are in the books as of November 5, 2011, and a fun time was had by all. Yeah, I know I'm a little late in getting this posted.  Wanna make somethin' of it?

Conditions: Cold, sunny, light breeze...  This turned out better than expected, since rain/snow mix had been forecast for much of the week.

The course: The half marathon course had some patchy snow/ice on the ground, and there is a fair amount of unpaved surface, but I didn't see anyone go down.  I was able to take this first part of the course about as fast as I wanted to, despite the conditions.

Mile 1 - 6

First two and a half miles were on pavement, with some icy patches ad some foot-tracked hard-pack snow remnants, then onto some dirt/gravel path to complete the initial full lap around Houts and Equalizer (Two small reservoirs), then back to the pavement around Houts one more time, before rising up out of the basin containing the two reservoirs on a dirt road lading west to Boyd Lake Ave (Cty 9).

Mile 6 - 7.3
This stretch was on asphalt on slightly rolling terrain. Nothing too steep.  It was just nice to have solid footing under foot.

Mile 7.3 - 9.3
Turning off of Cty 9 and running through the neighborhoods around Boyd Lake was a nice surprise in a few ways. In previous years, the route continued up Cty 9 over a gradual incline. Going down the other side of that made for some good splits for a couple miles, but you had to run by a cattle feedlot, and the scenery wasn't that great. The new route through the neighborhoods eliminated one of the two highest points in the course in exchange for lightly rolling residential streets with a half-mile stretch right along the lake, so the scenery was excellent, the traffic was slower, and some neighborhood folk came out to cheer runners on, as well.

Mile 9.3 - 10.3
This was a tough mile, including the steepest/longest hill along the course, and right at the point in a half marathon when you look at you're either questioning whether you'll be able to continue, or when you think you're doing pretty well, because your splits have been pretty good up to this point. It's not a giant hill. It just comes at an inconvenient point in the race, when even modest hills start to feel more like mountains.

Mile 10.3 - 12.1
This stretch starts with about a 30 ft. decent in 0.2 miles - a nice, runnable slope where you can pick up some time, then runs along the path and roadway in Boyd Lake State Park over lightly rollin terrain

The Last Mile

Brett finishing the Half Marathon

The last mile is a little tough, too, forcing you to climb the 30 feet you descended at the beginning of the previous stretch over about three quarters of a mile, before showing you another good descent leading down to the finishing stretch at the swimming beach (not that anyone swims here when it's 30-something degrees out.

Results: I finished with a time of 138:28 (12/60 in AG 40-49), which was a new half Marathon PR for me, and it was particularly gratifying considering it was on a tougher course than my to previous downhill half marathons. Given how slow I've felt when I go out for my training runs lately, it's nice to go out for a race and half a strong performance. This year, they also provided finisher medals. I'm not sure if they did that in previous years, but it was a nice touch.

I'm not too skinny. Your concept of normal is just too fat

A co-worker of mine told my wife I looked anorexic. I hear that I am "too skinny" quite often, actually. I simply exercise a good amount and avoid overeating. I really should put a chart up at my desk to show where I sit on the BMI chart. Like all overly simplistic models/predictors BMI isn't a perfect measure of weight/condition in all cases, but I've got a pretty light to average frame, but it's decent general guide. I sit at a BMI of 20-21 (6' tall, 155 lbs), depending on my exact weight, which falls squarely inside the "normal" weight BMI range of 18.5-25.

Spooktacular 5K Race

The 2011 Spooktacular Race, a 5K race benefiting Children's Speech and Reading Center in Fort Collins, was a fun event.  The conditions were cold, and I suspect I sort of blew my chances for doing a little better by running two four-mile progressive runs the day before, but I had a great time and still took first in my age group with a time of 20:23, my second best 5K race time ever. Events like this are only partly about the competition, though. They're about calling attention to and raising funds for some worthy cause.  

Being a Halloween Race (yes, I'm late posting this), it also involves many creative costumes, and entire families participating together, which makes it fun to hang out after the finish to watch the kids events.  This year, the fields were all snow-covered, so the races were a little smaller and held on the asphalt basketball courts, but I don't think that diminished things at all.  Just ask the winner of the costume contest, pictures below.

Seeking Motivation

I've been busy lately, mostly with work. I like my job, so when they offered unlimited overtime for the month of September, I volunteered for as much as I could stand. I made some extra money, but I regretted not having the time I wanted for running. The trouble with not running regularly, and particularly not running races regularly, is that I start to lose my edge. Sure my endurance and speed suffer, but the most important thing that suffers is my psyche.

The more distant I become from something I enjoy, the less "connection" I feel with it, and the enjoyment derived from it. I can forget that the reward for putting in the effort is more than enough to justify making the effort. For some people, this seems not to be a major issue, but for me it's a big one. If I lay off running too long, I lose sight to some extent of the link between my running experiences and my mental and physical state. Starting to run again after laying off or slowing down in my training can feel like scaling a cliff I've scaled before a hundred times. I am disappointed at what I've lost, find the going difficult, and can be bored with what I have to do to get back to the top of my game, and have begun to lose sight of how much I gain from my involvement in the sport. A little of the "fire" is gone.

In looking for ways to rekindle that fire, I find that meeting up and talking to other people who enjoy running helps. While I may not be ready to do my best in a race, I sometimes force myself to enter one when I'm not quite trained up, just to restore my connection with the sport and rekindle the flame that drives me to improve myself. When I get out there and do something, I'm never sorry I did.

Fortunately, social media facilitates this.

This weekend, I ran the Bacon Bits race with a friend from my youth who recently moved to Colorado, and today I ran a Tortoise & Hare club race with the Fort Collins Running Club, so I've had a lot of good opportunity to reconnect with both aspects of the sport or running that appeal to me (camaraderie and competition).