Go, you chicken fat, go away!

These are pictures from yesterday's race.  Grumpy, Dopey, and Happy

Me and Camille.  (She is so short!)

Time:  33:33 (avg. pace 8:17)

Temp: 41

I decided to do a nice and easy run as my first run since the race.  I thought of a new route to take and hoped it would be about 4 miles.  It was pretty close.  And I missed one of the turns since I'm not used to running that way.  It was probably closer to 4.04 miles.  What I liked most about this route is that it takes me by one of the commercial sites I did the civil design for.  It does my heart good to see the finished product of one of my designs.  It does my heart even better knowing that my design works better than the street design.  In your face [other engineering company]!

I ran the first mile just to see again how fast I could do it.  This time I tried to not start out so fast.  I did it in 6:56.  Then I took a 4 minute rest and ran another, this time at my normal pace.  The second one was in 7:51.  Then I ran a 0.2 mile cool down with Katelynn.  She managed to run in a 9:56 min./mi. pace for the entire run.  The extra 0.1 miles was because the loop around the block is 1.05 miles.

Guess whose second birthday it is???

Everyone will of course remember her from this the first Discussion Board thread to have over 16,000 views: http://fastrunningblog.com/forum/index.php/topic,725.0.html

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I ran the regular route this morning.  Nothing special.  No funny stories.  Lots of walkers.

Time: 23:25 (avg. pace 7:55)

Splits: 8:03, 8:02, 7:20 (7:40)

I don't have a digital scale.  I think I might have been a hair under 200 this morning, but I'll mark it as 200 even.  Have a good day.

Late blogging today.  And I'm up a couple of pounds.  Shouldn't have ate that tuna melt at Quizno's yesterday.  And the chicken noodle soup.  And the 2 16 oz. cups of diet cranberry/grapefruit juice or whatever it was.  But what a deal!  A real value.

Time: 46:41 (avg. pace 8:17)

Splits: 7:59, 7:57, 8:18, 8:35, 8:30, 5:23 (8:26)

Time: 1:34:57 (avg. pace 9:37)

Splits: 10:11, 10:11, 9:50, 9:27, 9:21, 9:28, 9:43, 9:16, 9:22, 8:08 (9:22)

This morning I went running with fellow bloggers Camille and James W, and the rest of our Ragnar team minus two.  It was a fun time.  We met at Camille's house and had Jared take us to the backside of Usury Pass.  It's a 700 foot climb in 3.6 miles (about 3.7%)  From there it was 1.5% downhill to Camille's house.  This used to be part of the Ragnar course until they changed it this year.  In my opinion, this was the "Ragnar" leg of the Del Sol race.  James and I ran together for the first three miles.  The first two and a half miles are the steepest.  After that you feel a noticeable difference, but it's still uphill.  James started to pull away, and I wanted to let him know that if he felt comfortable finding his way back to Camille's, then he didn't need to wait for me.  Apparently he did, and off he went.  I met up with Jared, Camille, and Bethany at the top of the hill and we ran together the whole way back.  Janna and Bryan passed us at about the 7 mile mark, and I wanted to drop Camille and Bethany and run with them, but they were too fast.  Probably Camille and Bethany could've picked it up some, but they didn't, and for that I'm grateful.  The last pack of runners arrived about two minutes after us.  I think we have a pretty solid team.  We should fair well.  It would be nice to get in the top 25% again.

After the run we had breakfast.  We each had an assignment to bring something.  There was a lot left over even though we didn't bring that much.  Your appetite's just not that big after running 10 miles.  Everything was yummy, but the fruit salad really hit the spot.  Then we had a team meeting.  It should be a fun time.  Ragnar is mostly about the fun, but doing well always makes it even better.

I started getting ready to go on a run this morning even though I was running a little late.  My wife told me to just wait 'til tonight so I could take the kids with me.  Unfortunately it rained like cats and dogs, so I never made it out.  I tried pedalling around on the stationary bike, but that only lasted for about 10 minutes.  I was too busy trying to watch my latest Blockbuster(r) movie The First Olympics: Athens 1896.  I didn't think to turn on the captions because the majority of the movies I've recieved lately have been B movies without enough budget to have captions as a feature.  I only watched about an hour of it, and so far so good.  It's a made for TV two part film starring a young David Caruso (CIS Miami).  He did this movie a couple of years after doing Rambo: First Blood.

Time: 30:25 (avg. pace 8:18)

Splits: 7:54, 8:14, 8:39, 5:34 (8:30)

I took Ginger this morning.  She has never run quite this far.  I think she knows our regular route because she tried to turn where we usually do.  Anyway, she took off fast again.  I looked at my Garmin and it said our current pace was 6:12.  That didn't last long.  The last mile I wanted to pick it up, but every time I did she would cut me off.  I think I'll only take her on much shorter faster runs from now on; like 1 to 2 miles.

I've gained a few pounds over the last few days thanks to my nevermind of what I'm eating since Saturday's breakfast run.  For lunch there was a ward activity where they served taco salad.  Not on my diet menu.  For dinner we went to our neighbor's house for a BBQ where we were fellowshipped by the Baptists.  Dinner was excellent.  Riblets, baby back ribs, beef, spaghetti with meat balls, hot dogs, cake.  Not on my diet menu.  Sunday wasn't too bad, but there was a fireside at church.  For dessert they served cake, cookies and brownies.  Not on my diet menu.  Yesterday I was talked into going to Taco Bell for lunch.  For FHE dessert we had brownie sundaes.  Not on my diet menu.  So, I need to get serious again.  Got a 5k race this Saturday.

And today is Katelynn's 6th birthday.  I'll have to post pictures later.

Time: 23:00 (avg. pace 7:40)

Splits: 7:46, 7:56, 7:19

My plan today was to run two easy miles and try to run the last one as fast as I could.  While this is my fastest pace for three miles in the post high school era, it didn't feel great.  I felt like I was still feeling the effects of Saturday's long run.  Some of my muscles were achey, and I just couldn't open up my stride.  Hopefully, by Saturday I'll be feeling fresh and ready to go.

Since I used the word feel so much in my post, here is a song:  Feelings, nothing more than feelings, trying to forget my, feelings of love...

Time: 17:00 (avg. pace 8:30)

I ran to church to do guard duty for Home Family Personal Enrichment night.  People must've thought it queer to see some guy running down the road with a Book of Mormon in hand.  I finished 2 Nephi and got through Jacob 4.  I was going to run home but was offered a ride and took it.  Now I wish I hadn't because I STEE-INK!

Glad I got a couple miles in so I'm no longer at 6.66 miles for the week.  Bad number.

I heard about this race two weeks ago at London's Run.  This was a fundraiser to help a couple of girls that are joined at the heart.  They weren't supposed to live for more than a few hours, but now they're two.  From the website: "Emma and Taylor are our 2 year old twins that are also conjoined, sharing one common heart and liver. They are face to face, from the breast bone down to the belly button. They have their own arms and legs, and certainly their own personalities. Taylor has a twinkle in her eye and always being silly. Emma is more reserved and loves to be cuddled. At age two, they have beaten the odds at survival and we hope to have many, many more years with them."

I don't know why I pick all the emotional races to do.  Anyway, me, AJ, and Mary got up at 6am so we could get there, get our bibs and race chips.  It was pretty cold for an Arizonan.  My kids ran with their jackets on and pinned their bibs to the outside of them.  The pick-up area was far away from the starting line.  I headed over to the start, and no one was there.  It was like a ghost town.  The race was supposed to start in twenty minutes, and no one.  I was starting to get worried that they told me the wrong place, like maybe this was where the 10k or 1 mile fun run started.  Then they started to come.  And boy did they come.  I want to say there was close to 300 participants in the 5k, but I'll have to wait and see if they post the results on-line.  My guess is everyone was hanging out by the school, and they made an announcement to head over to the starting line.

The good thing was that I was able to get up right at the line this time.  They used an ankle bracelet to time us, but there was no sensor for the start.  So, lesson learned from two weeks ago.  [Oh, before I go on I wanted to interject a little side story.  I saw the wife of the bishop I served under when I was in the bishopric a couple of years ago.  She's lost a lot of weight.  Yay for her.]  They counted us down, and off we went.

Two high school kids, two young kids, and two old guys took off like rabbits.  We had to make an immediate right after about 20 feet followed by a left after another 200 feet.  The little 9 year old girl turned right again and was booking it.  The other little kid did, too, but I yelled that they were going the wrong way.  The boy turned around and yelled at the girl.  Then everyone starting yelling at her.  But she would have none of it.  She kept going.  She was in the zone.  Within that first 500 feet everyone settled in and the tone was set for the race.  I never got passed after that, and no one passed me.

I had the Garmin set to alert me at 7:40 intervals since I was hoping my average would be right around that.  I was pleasantly surprised to see that I was going faster than I hoped, and I felt good.  I kept expecting for people to start passing me soon, but when I made a turn around the one mile mark, there was a little bit of distance between me and the pack.  At about the 1.5 mile point I saw one of the high school kids stop to walk.  He was quite a bit ahead of me, and I hoped I'd pass him.  I don't like when people walk in a race and still beat me.  I had my eyes on one of the older guys the whole time, but I couldn't close the gap.  Right towards the end the high schooler started to walk again and the old guy passed him.  The old guy beat me by about a minute and the high schooler beat me by 11 seconds.  With about a quarter of a mile to go I saw someone behind me start to make his kick.  He was coming on fast.  I thought for sure he was going to pass me, but with about 70 feet to go I gave it everything I had and held him off.

6th place overall - 1st place AD and most importantly, I DIDN'T GET CHICKED!  As the young folk say, "Woot!"  After I caught my breath, I headed back up the course to find my kids.  I found AJ first.  I encouraged him on by telling him he was almost there.  He finished the 3.29 mile course in just over 30 minutes.  (Yeah, it was a little longer than a 5k should've been.  Oh well.)  Then I went to find Mary.  She was running with the friend of the bishop's wife.  (I do know their names, but I'm protecting their anonymity.)  She said Mary had been good company.  I coached Mary in the rest of the way.  She wanted to stop, but we were almost there, so I wouldn't let her.  She finished just under 39 minutes, I believe.

It feels good to win my age division.  I know the real runners were running the 10k, but I'll take what I can get.  So proud of my kids.  AJ took 57th overall and third in his AD.  Mary took 113th overall and 2nd in her AD.  Now it's on to Ragnar!!

Splits:

1 mile - 7:06

2 mile - 7:33

3 mile - 7:31

0.29 miles - 1:58 (6:47 avg.)

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I ran the regular 2.95 mile route in the afternoon.  Time 25:36.  Pace 8:40.  Now I need to take my wife out on a date.  Happy Valentines Day!

Pictures from yesterday's race

Pre-race pic

2nd race in a row I ran too fast for my wife to capture me on film

Mary finishing up.  We have three action pictures of her coming in and in all three her left leg is behind her and her feet aren't touching the ground.  She may very well have glided in on air.

Awards.  Since we got a first place, second place, and third place in our respective age divisions, we got one of each color flower.  The local elementary kids made these ceramic (?) flowers, and that's what they used as awards.  Pretty cool.

FOR THE FIRST TIME IN 13 YEARS I AM UNDER 200 LBS!!!!

My original plan was to run 3 miles yesterday and 5.6 today, but I didn't go yesterday.  So I decided to do it all today, when to my great joy, I discovered that it was raining.  Raining in Arizona?  What is this, bizzaro world?  I thought about it for a minute.  "I am going to get soaked anyway from sweating.  What's the difference?  This should be an adventure."  So off I went.  I prayed that my Garmin was waterproof.  Then I thought, "I sweat on my Garmin, also."

Splits:

1 mile - 8:11 - raining steady

2 mile - 8:11 - still raining steady

3 mile - 8:20 - rain dies down to a drizzle

4 mile - 8:41 - drizzle

5 mile - 8:52 - rain picks back up

6 mile - 8:48 - raining steady

7 mile - 8:56 - stops raining all together (My Garmin was still set to alert me at 7:40 intervals.  So at this point my Garmin lapped me.)

8 mile - 8:58

0.60 mile - 5:21 (8:57 avg.)

Overall average - 8:38

Kind of cool out today in my tank top and body armor.  I'm thinking Ragnar might actually be cold this year.  But there won't be any snow pelting us in the face, that's for sure.

Time: 30:13 (avg. pace 7:53)

Splits: 8:00, 7:48, 7:56, 6:29 (7:47)

I thought this was cool.  Then again, I like controversy.  When I'm not invloved.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUAO7xmNKeA

Time: 22:36 (7:32 avg.)

Splits: 7:47, 7:42, 7:08

Finish time: 7:20am

Temp: 48

It felt pretty nice out today.  Kelli, forget everything I said about it being cold for Ragnar.  I think it's going to warm up quite nicely.

Do you ever get a song stuck in your head that you don't know the words to?  That's what happened to me this morning.  Do-do-do-do-something in motion, All I need is a set of wings, Do-do-do-do-something-something, St. Elmo's fire!

Time: 32:22 (avg. pace 8:06)

Splits: 8:05, 8:10, 8:02, 8:05

Finish time: 11pm

Temp: 56

I stayed up late last night watching some Lifetime for Women made for TV drama.  So this morning I didn't wake up 'til 8:45am.  I knew my wife (slave driver) wanted me to work all day on various projects, but I still wanted to get a nice long run in sometime today.  One project was pulling the weeds in the front yard and blowing the leaves.  It wasn't long before my allergies started to pick up.  Then I washed the inside of my van so it would be nice for Ragnar.  Then on to the backyard to pull more weeds.  More allergies.  Then dishes.  Then we had company come over.  Then I ate a hotdog, bratwurst, and Doritos for dinner.  Then I had an ice cream sandwich.  So I bagged the idea of going on a real long run.  I decided just to do 4 miles.  Now I'm sitting here typing my entry with a stuffy nose and an upset stomach.  Have a good Sunday.

Time: 45:11 (avg. pace 8:01)

Splits: 1 mile - 7:46, 2 mile - 7:52, 3 mile - 8:05, 4 mile - 8:23, 5 mile - 8:15, 0.64 miles - 4:51 (7:38min./mi. avg.)

Finish time: 8am (I should be at work right now.)

Temp: 62

I wanted to keep my pace under 8, but didn't quite make it.  I've also been forced to say that my wife is not a slave driver.  Now, it's off to my flogging.

Time: 23:34 (avg. pace 7:51)

Splits: 1 mile - 7:47, 2 mile - 8:04, 3 mile - 7:43

Finish time: 7:45am

Temp: 55

I think this will be my last run before Ragnar.

RAGNAR!!!  This is what I live for.  The one race I look forward to all year.  You see, racing hurts.  Ragnar hurts.  It hurts bad.  But the difference is, you have 11 friends rooting you on the whole time.  And that helps.  This is the race that got me back into running.  It's the race that changed my unhealthy lifestyle.  I owe my life to Ragnar.  (Cheesy enough?)

One week before the race I get a phone call from the wife of our fastest team member.  She tells me that his back is bothering him, and he hasn't been able to run for two weeks.  That got me worried.  The next day, he called and said he's still going to try and make it, and he wants to run 5:45 mi/min.  That relieved my worries.  Then Tuesday he calls and says it's a no-go.  Dang!  Who can I find now?  I start making phone calls, asking people on the blog, asking members of Athlinks.  Finally I asked a guy that ran with me last year.  He hadn't even been training, but he said he'd do it.  So awesome.

The day before the race I get another phone call.  No!  Jared and Michelle Cox from the other van, the ones that started this madness two years ago, said that they couldn't do it.  Michelle has a severely handicapped sister.  They were told she didn't have much time to live.  Sure enough, she passed away early the next morning.  (For more on the story, see tomorrow's entry.)  So now the whole team was scrambling to find two more runners.  15 hours to go!!  Is it possible?  Of course.  This is Ragnar, baby!  The spirit of Ragnar won't let us down.  Janna from the other van got a friend to run for their van.  He had to skip out on his classes.  Then Bethany from our van got her brother to join up.  The only problem was that he had to work, so he couldn't run his first leg.  We called and got permission for the Animal James W to run that leg.  Now we were set.  Van #2 consisted of myself, Bethany, her brother Christian, Glen from last year's race, and two fellow FRB-er's, Camille, and James W.

We drive up to the First Major Exchange point, and who do I spot?  This red-hot pink chick that is none other than the birthday girl herself, Kelli.  Also in her van from the FRB was her husband Scott (Kelli says he has a blog, but I've yet to see it),  the infamous Walter, and Walter's wife, Misty.  It was great seeing them in person.

We decorated our van and got ready to run.  Our other van managed to get ahead of our predicted pace by about 20 minutes.  (They had all the downhill.)  James was going to run this first leg as a warm-up leg, but adrenaline got the better of him.  He smoked it and put us way ahead of pace.  Everybody else was running right on.

Leg 11

Finally it was my turn.  I started about 10 minutes after the 5:30pm night time start, so I had to wear the reflective vest, headlamp, and tail light.  I didn't really need to turn them on because it was still visible out most of the time.  I tried to finish in time to give James a little bit of daylight, but there wasn't much left when I got there.  My goal was to average 8:15's.  I knew it would be hard because the last three miles were uphill.  I hoped I could make up the time in the first 5 miles.  I started out running the first two miles under an 8 min. pace.  About half a mile into it I got passed by 4 guys all at once.  I thought, "This is ridiculous.  I'm running a 7:30 avg. and  I'm getting passed.  Well, all these guys are going to burn out at mile 5, and I'll catch them."  That never happened.  For the first two miles I was running about 70 feet behind this lady.  I finally pulled up alongside of her, and we chatted for a while.  She was a Mamatukee, a team of over 30 year old mothers from Ahwatukee.  We ran together for about 2 miles and then she left me in the dust.  Literally, because the entire leg was on a dirt road.  The best part was the stream that we had to cross.  I had been forewarned that it was there and told my team to be ready with trash bags for me to step into, but I beat them to it.  So I had to take a few steps in the water and run with wet feet.  No big deal.  A van had gotten stuck in the mud here, and Camille's husband, Brandon, pulled him out.  He thrives on that kind of stuff.  So best mile : 7:30, worst mile : 9:47.  Didn't hit my goal, but was okay with it.  See tomorrow's entry for the remainder of the race report.

Leg 23

Can you say freezing head wind?  What the heck was this?  Why me?  Why?  Nobody else had to run in the freezing wind.  Just me.  I knew this was going to be tough, so I predicted a pace of 8:30.  Little did I know I would be fighting the wind the whole time.  There comes a time in every race I've done over 10 miles when I ask myself, "What am I doing?  I don't belong here.  No amount of bragging rights is worth pain I'm going through for not being in the proper shape I need to be."  I started to doubt Ragnar.  Maybe I should hang it up after this race.  It is getting kind of expensive.  It's a logistical nightmare.  It's hard.  But then I gut it out, and it isn't long before I remember why I keep coming back.

This was a 6.4 mile leg.  The first 4.4 were uphill into the wind.  The last two were 2 miles downhill into the wind.  It didn't really feel like downhill, and I was cursing Paul Peterson's name most of the time.  Best mile : 8:53, worst mile : 10:19 (my one and only mile over a 10 min. pace.)  I think the best part of this leg was running behind someone named Shawn for a little bit without him knowing.  There must have been a pause in his IPOD because all the sudden I scared the begeebeez out of him.

After James finished running for our van came the real hard part: getting to Camille's house without falling asleep.  Camille lives right close to another guy's house that was on my team last year.  It was perfect going to his house before our last set of legs to shower and rest.  So we decided to do the same thing at Camille's house, but they changed the course this year.  No matter.  It was still worth it for the warm shower that was oh so much better than the cold tent shower in the gravel a few hours earlier.  Plus Brandon made us waffles.  That hit the spot.  I also went and filled up the tank with gas again.  Finally after eating and showering, I went to the van and caught a few winks.

Leg 35

Only three miles to go.  This is where I hoped to make up for lost time.  But guess what.  Now the hot Arizona sun was out.  I go from freezing to burning.  Whatever.  I could tell the sun was affecting all of us.  Christian had about a three mile run.  The first two mile had to be the steepest section of the course.  But that last mile coming downhill was amazing.  I swear he ran a sub 4.  Poor Glen.  The guy who hadn't run in months had the 8 mile run.  He gutted it out.  I kept telling him if he needed to quit, I'd take over for him.  It became a moral victory for him to finish it all.  Camille struggled.  I think the heat and her knee caught up to her.  Then I started my last three miles.  I grabbed a bottle of water and told my team just to meet me at the next exchange.  This was just going to be like a loop around my neighborhood.  I wish.  It was hot!  Funny how it gets hotter as the day goes on.  But I didn't feel too bad.  I stayed alive, and that was the most important thing.  First mile - 7:51, second mile - 9:02, third mile - 8:59.

The best part of this section of the race was when I got word that Michelle had come out and was running with some of our teammates in the other van.  Yep.  That's against the rules, but anyone that wants to penalize us for having our actual team captain come out to get her mind off recent events (see yesterday's entry), is one heartless SOG.  I gave her the biggest hug in the history of hugs.

Overall we came in 59th place.  I was hoping for another top 25% finish, but we barely missed it.  But with all the changes to the team at the last minute, I'll take it.  To see everyone at the finish line together was awesome.  And now I remember why I keep doing this every year.