run – Page 6 – Sexy Hermit

I’m on a bus

Well, I’m on a long ride from Champaign to St. Louis and this Greyhound bus has WiFi so I might as well use it. I spent a few days back in the office this week for the annual Wolfram Technology Conference. Mathematica 8 was officially announced and will be released next month. I actually did put a fair amount of work into this release before I refocused my efforts on mobile products a year ago. Of course, I’m having trouble remembering what my contributions to Mathematica 8 were since I’ve been so consumed by other projects for so long. The conference went fairly well though, and I even had a few productive days of work while I was there.

I spent the first night at our old house (which hasn’t sold yet, anybody interested?) before staying the next two nights with Cara, John, and Ashlynn at my previous house. I can’t seem to ever move away!

In addition to friends and coworkers I also made it to a Second Wind Fun Run and even saw one of my cycling friends randomly on the street as I was riding my scooter from the bus station to work on Tuesday. After spending so much time alone, or with just Team Ragfield, it was really great to see everyone again.

Skippo

Sunday morning I rand my second race since we moved to St. Louis, The Skippo, a 20 KM (12.4 mile) trail run at Castlewood State Park. I had heard good things about the trail running and mountain biking at the park, but I hadn’t yet had time to pay a visit.

I suspected the course would be quite hilly (by central Illinois standards) and the website alluded to stairs on the course. On the first of two 10 KM laps of the trail I was both pleasantly and unpleasantly surprised. First, the course was not as hilly as I expected, on the whole. Five of the six miles were almost completely flat. Second, the one mile that wasn’t flat was an absolute beast. An interminable set of stairs rose 300 ft in about 1/4 mile, then a long false flat lead to steep switchbacks on the way back down.

I made a point of starting the race slow, or so I thought. I was still with a large pack in the top 10 as my watch beeped, showing 6:10 for the first mile. Damn. Little by little the pack spread out a bit. The stairs came in the fourth mile. When I reached the top I almost stopped running because the view of the Meremac river and autumn foliage was so breathtaking. No, wait, it was the stairs that were breathtaking. Anyway, I immediately started planning a hike back up here with the family, perhaps after the race even.

I hammered down the hill as fast as I could, but I still couldn’t keep in contact with the guys ahead of me. I spent the next six miles by myself trying to catch back up to my former group, making little headway.

The second time up the stairs I was delighted to find Melissa & Will standing near the top waiting for me. That wasn’t part of the plan, but on the bright side it meant that I didn’t have to hike back up here for a third time to show it to them. Melissa had made a friend and they decided to hike up there together to see the view and watch the race unfold.

Again, I hammered down the switchbacks but continued to lose time. By the bottom of the hill another runner, the first placed woman, caught and passed me. Back on the flats I was feeling a little stronger so I stayed right with her for a mile or so. In the last mile I felt a little stronger so I surged back ahead, finishing in 1:28:19, good for 10^th overall, 2^nd in my age group.

The age group award was pretty sweet, a $10 gift certificate to Big River Running Company, which was a good deal for both of us because I ended up buying more than $10 worth of merchandise from them.

Anyway the race was challenging and rewarding. The course was both easier and harder than I expected. I enjoyed the trail, I can definitely see puttin some long winter miles in out there.

September Stats

Photo of the Day

I really phoned a lot of these in. I’m hoping once we get more stuff put away and I’m not quite as busy I can put a little more time into these and bring the quality up a bit.

Running

So in addition to the Forest Park XC race I also upped my mileage a lot. I’ve been doing long runs with Melissa to help her train for the Indianapolis marathon in November. I’ve also been running more regularly (i.e. three times per week instead of two), probably due to the fact that I’ve been biking less.

Month	Distance	# Workouts	Avg per Workout
January	109.05 Mile	10	10.905 Mile
February	76.18 Mile	8	9.5225 Mile
March	84.86 Mile	10	8.486 Mile
April	83.15 Mile	9	9.23889 Mile
May	57.95 Mile	7	8.27857 Mile
June	17.98 Mile	3	5.99333 Mile
July	54.62 Mile	8	6.8275 Mile
August	65.78 Mile	9	7.30889 Mile
September	107.4 Mile	13	8.26154 Mile
Total	656.97 Mile	77	8.53208 Mile

Cycling

September was kind of a throwaway month for my cycling. The only month this year I managed to ride less was one with 28 days. On the bright side I did have a good ride with my friend Nick, who moved to this area from Champaign-Urbana a year ago. Thanks to him I now know precisely one route with a fair-but-not-ridiculous amount of traffic.

September 2010 by bike

Bike	Distance	# Rides	Avg per Ride
Bianchi	53.54 Mile	10	5.354 Mile
Big Red	8 Mile	2	4 Mile
Pocket Rocket	15.78 Mile	2	7.89 Mile
Thundercougarfalconbird	69.18 Mile	3	23.06 Mile
Total	146.5 Mile	17	8.61765 Mile

January – September 2010

Month	Distance	# Workouts	Avg per Workout
January	166.25 Mile	20	8.3125 Mile
February	140.67 Mile	12	11.7225 Mile
March	508.83 Mile	18	28.2683 Mile
April	318.98 Mile	13	24.5369 Mile
May	365.89 Mile	20	18.2945 Mile
June	447.97 Mile	22	20.3623 Mile
July	390.59 Mile	19	20.5574 Mile
August	223. Mile	15	14.8667 Mile
September	146.5 Mile	17	8.61765 Mile
Total	2708.68 Mile	156	17.3633 Mile

Walking

Once we got moved in I haven’t been walking as much. I’m no longer with Will all day and I’m working at home, so I don’t have many places or reasons to walk like I was doing. I mostly save it up for the weekends.

Month	Distance	# Workouts	Avg per Workout
January	28.66 Mile	9	3.18444 Mile
February	51.45 Mile	16	3.21563 Mile
March	34.7 Mile	10	3.47 Mile
April	44.35 Mile	11	4.03182 Mile
May	48.75 Mile	14	3.48214 Mile
June	64.2 Mile	16	4.0125 Mile
July	56.3 Mile	15	3.75333 Mile
August	56.75 Mile	16	3.54688 Mile
September	28.84 Mile	7	4.12 Mile
Total	414. Mile	114	3.63158 Mile

Forest Park XC

The first weekend I stayed in our new house in St. Louis I saw there was going to be a huge cross country race at nearby Forest Park. While the event was mostly aimed at high school runners, they had a 4K open race (2.5 miles). Having just whet my appetite for cross country at the DHS alumni race a few weeks prior I decided to run it. There aren’t a whole lot of open cross country races around, so I wasn’t really sure what type of people were going to show up. The answer is good runners. A lot of them.

It poured down rain all the previous day and night so the course was ankle deep water in many places. It only took a few steps of my pre-race warmup to give up all hope of keeping my feet dry. A sizable crowd lined up for the 7:30 AM open 4K and then we were off. The start was very fast and I was quite a ways back even after I started faster than I should have. The first mile was 5:32, and I slowed down from there. The second lap was a lot of back and forth, notably with a 13 year old boy and a 22 year old woman who went on to win the women’s race. Around two miles in I repeated to myself “I’m too old for this shit“, by which of course I meant races that short and that fast.

I finished in 14:50 (5:58 pace), 25^th overall, and I somehow managed to get 3^rd in the 30-39 age group. Despite the fact that I actually had a pretty solid race, I was a ways off the top 5-10% I would have expected for this sort of race… indicating the competition was really good.

I stuck around a short while to watch a couple of the early high school races before heading back home. It’s been over 10 years since I watched a high school XC meet. It was a good time.

August Stats

Okay, so this is a little late, but I have a good excuse. We have moved and we’re getting settled in to our new house in St. Louis.

In addition to everything else that was going on, I was foolish enough to migrate all my training log data for the past 10 years into a completely new software system. Right before we left Champaign-Urbana I wrote some scripts to convert all my old data into the new format. Unfortunately, I didn’t get around to updating the scripts I use to generate these monthly reports so I was unable to do this August report at the end of August. Now, a month and a half later, I finally updated that code and, well, here we are.