The Official Site for the Lackluster Goings-On of Michael Kaiser
Posts tagged running
Sleep Running
Mar 11th
Eleven days of working out straight. I alternate between running and strength training, which barely affords my crippled, old body the rest it needs after I thrash a section of it. So far so good, except today I half-assed my run because I couldn’t shake some lung wheeziness. It happens. I’m fairly confident I’ll be where I want to be by race day, and if not, live and learn. At least I’ll be in a better place than I was last week.
The Dude wakes up two or three times a night, but the the third time is usually around when my alarm would be going off anyway, so it’s really just the midnight and 2am bits that aren’t working for me. Lately I think I’ve been sleeping through it more though, which makes me feel somewhat bad, because then The Girl has to do everything. But when I was waking up for it, The Girl had to do everything anyway, because she’s the only one who can do what he’s crying about…aka feed him. I’m not sure why I feel compelled to be awake just because she is, but I do. I was raised Catholic, what can I say? Guilt it my imaginary friend. The sucker’s getting big though, up the 11+ lbs already. Can’t wait until he grows a neck or becomes a little more mobile. He’s like carrying around a jellyfish all the time right now.
The Kid seems to grow another inch with each passing weekend. I think she’s trying to be taller than me. She’s learning to read and do math too. I think she’s trying to be smarter than me. I don’t like this. I want her to stay short and dumb, but she apparently has other plans. Hopefully when the time inevitably comes I can still take her, or at least out run her!
Off to the in-laws next month. Looking forward to getting the hell out of Dodge and sleeping in. Hopefully it’s not too hot. Of course, for some reason we scheduled the trip to at the same time WonderCon is going on, so I guess I’ll miss that once again. I used to go religiously, but since I got out of the game I’ve missed the last three years. I’d like to go again some day, but there’s always next year!
Pre-Race Warm-Up
Feb 17th
Can’t have a plan without a goal, so for my first half-marathon, here are my two goals, in order of priority: A) finish the entire thing without stopping or walking; and B) finish two hours or under.
The first goal is fairly obvious, I’m not running a half marathon if I don’t actually run it. I can definitely walk 13 miles now, and could probably walk/run 13 miles too. So the challenge is to run the whole thing. That’s top of my list.
The second goal is fairly arbitrary, I guess. I Googled, “What’s a descent half marathon time?” and two-ish hours seemed to be the consensus for first timers. So two hours seems like a nice even number. I don’t care as much about this goal as I do the first one, however.
Can’t meet a goal without a plan, so I went to RunnersWorld.com and used their handy dandy training tool to calculate out a gradual 16 week plan that ends a week before the race and gets me up to being able to run 13 miles in 2 hours and 3 minutes. (I’ll try and shave off the 3 minutes on my own.) I was supposed to start this plan on Tuesday, but I didn’t factor in that there would be nobody working at the gym I wanted to sign up for on President’s Day, so I am a day behind. However, since I only have to run three times this week, I still have plenty of week left. I started this morning. So far so ACK!, but more on that later.
Here’s a fun before-and-after comparison. My cholesterol has always been crap. Even when I was working out religiously, it was borderline crap, so now that I’ve been a sloth for a good year or more, I was curious as to how horrific it had become and decided to have it checked right before starting this little working out endeavor. Here’s the results:
| Component | Value | Standard Range |
|---|---|---|
| GLUCOSE, FASTING | 93 | 60-99 mg/dL |
| LDL, GOAL <160 | DESIRED | |
| CHOLESTEROL | 297 | <239- mg/dL |
| TRIGLYCERIDE | 355 | <199- mg/dL |
| HDL | 48 | >40- mg/dL |
| LDL CALCULATED | 178 | <129- mg/dL |
Hmm…should I be dead?
It’s a Race!
Feb 11th
So I went to the San Francisco Giant’s 2010 Fan Fest last weekend. Yes, I’m into baseball now, and no it’s not because I have a son, and yes I’ve never been into sports before and it doesn’t make any sense to suddenly like it and blah blah blah. I’ve heard it all already, thanks. At least I keep it separate so as not to annoy everybody. More on that soon.
ANYWAY, the point is, while I was there I came across a booth for a Giants related running event thing, and since I’ve been feeling like Fat Elvis again, I took a flyer and decided to make a goal out of it. So officially, I am running a half marathon for the Giant Race on Saturday, June 12 at AT&T Park. There was a 5K option as well, but I did that last year and I wanted to do something with a bit more difficultly, as I barely trained for the 5K and still managed to get through it. I don’t think one can half ass training for a half marathon. I can’t anyway. I’ve put in many miles in the past, but I’ve never run 13 in one stretch before, so it should be a challenge. My goal is to hopefully keep it under two hours, but finishing in general would be good!
I “get to” run one way or the other, but if you’ve always wanted to donate to Project Open Hand, you can do it via me though this handy little page they set up for me. I’m not really sure what happens if I get donations made in my name though.
Get To Work!
May 28th
Things I Worked On
The account for our wedding site through eWedding.com was going to expire, and rather than renew a site we do nothing with, The Girl asked if I could convert it to a family blog. I have done so, and she has not used it. Bug her. (Have I already plugged this? I feel déjà vu.)
Things I Am Working On
Running, running, running. Not sure what the next event will be, but something next month probably, and it will be a 10K. I can run that now, but I’m pretty slow. I’m currently at three days a week, hitting a treadmill across the street and following a program I found at Runners World. I was going more than three days a week, but my right heel kept hurting, and slowing me down even more, so the new schedule seems to be giving me the right amount of healing time for my aged carcass.
Worked on cleaning the garage last weekend. Got the garbage and donation stuff out, minus funiture. Have to borrow a truck for that. Now I just need to sell or organize the remainder. Almost there. I can see the ground, at any rate, so that’s a good sign. Hopefully The Girl will be able to park in there by the time the weather starts frosting up windows in the morning again.
Been updating the genealogy site more frequently. Love that new Family Tree Maker!
Things I Want To Work On
Drawing, drawing, drawing. God I’m lazy.
I want to make a Wordpress theme. I feel ready.
Slow and Steady Loses the Race
May 5th
WOW, I think I skipped an entire month. Perhaps Twitter is ruining my blogging enthusiasm. So much easier to write a one sentence thought rather than construct entire paragraphs. Da horror!
So what have I done? A bunch of stuff. In-Laws came and went again. (They still think I hate their visits, but I really do like it because somehow I end up watching way more of the TV I want when they’re here. Not sure why it works out that way, but I am not going to question it.) Went to Seattle on business. Been there once before, and like last trip, ate at the Space Needle and did not have time to hit the Experience Music Project nor the Sci-Fi Museum and Hall of Fame. Must visit that city when not working someday. (I managed to peak inside the Sci-Fi Museum when it was closed and saw a huge Gort in the lobby. Coool!)
But inbetween all that I did something worth doing, for once. As I may or may not have stated before, a buddy of mine and I agreed to run a 5K, 10K and 1/2 Marathon by September of this year. We set this goal last September, giving us a year to do it, so of course we’re just getting started now, because lazy is our M.O. We settled on the Mission City 5K Run for Fun held at Great America. It was their first year doing this, and it was pretty cool. You run through the park, which was nice, but then the last half of it involved circling around many a parking lot, which wasn’t as nice, but by then I was so tired I didn’t really care about the ambiance. The cool thing is they close the park down for the runners to enjoy after the event, and the price of admission is included in the race price, which was all of $20, so that’s about as cheap as Great America gets. Of course, I didn’t have time to stick around and enjoy the park, but perhaps next year I can drag the family with me and make a day of it.
I can’t say I trained for this very hard. I knew about for a month and started running at the gym a week prior. (See M.O. above.) It hurt, but I did better than I thought. I only stopped once, about half way through it, for about a minute. Legs hurting me didn’t stop me, a mild asthma attack didn’t stop me, feeling the contents of my stomach crawling up my neck stopped me pretty quick. There were children present, I didn’t want to scar any of them for life. After a brief catching of breath and a quick shot from my inhaler (I know ladies, could I be more sexy?) I finished fairly strong. That is to say I finished #338 out of 560, so not strong strong, but winning wasn’t the goal at all, just completing. Considering how little I trained, I’m fairly happy with my 12 minute mile average.
Time: 37.23. Beat that losers! (Sooo sad…)
Next stop is the 10K. No plans yet on which one, but I don’ t think I can get away with no training this time, so I signed up at Snaps Fitness, which is a 24/7 gym literally right across the street from my house. If I can’t make that work, well…that would be sad.
