Olivia has arrived, back to running some

Our daughter Olivia will be 2 weeks old on Tuesday and she's been a bundle of joy in our lives. She has put a little bit of a crimp in my running lately though. It's tough making it out there for all the workouts when I'm not getting my regular sleep. I'm working on getting back to running every day and I've had a couple of good workouts over the past week. Yesterday I made it out for the Saturday morning Kenyan Way workouts and ran 15.5 miles at a 7:10 average pace. I felt pretty good and finished the run with the last several miles being my fastest. On Wednesday I had a pretty good speed workout too in the evening at Memorial Park. My achilles and hamstring have been doing better too and they have improved enough that I don't need weekly treatments on them anymore. Here's a few pics of Olivia-

Training still going well, no baby yet

I've had another pretty solid week of training and have felt really good. Our baby hasn't arrived yet although it should be any day now. It looks like maybe she has my procrastination skills.

Monday - day off

Tuesday - 8.5 miles at lunch. It was really hot and humid but I saw one of my co-workers in the locker room about to head out so I ran about 5 miles with him and then added on some more on my own. 8.5 miles in 62 minutes.

Wednesday - Kenyan Way speed workout. 2.75 mile warmup, 1/2/3/3/2/1 workout with 1 minute hard, 1 minute recovery jog, 2 min hard, etc... Ran the workout with Claudio and had a good workout. We were moving at a pretty good clip and I had a strong workout. I covered about 3.5 miles during the workout and then did about a 2.5 mile cooldown.

Thursday - 8.6 miles at lunch. I didn't wear a watch so I don't know what kind of pace I was running, but I ran a 6.9 mile loop and a 1.7 mile loop at a recovery pace. I was a little tired from the Wednesday workout, but I got through it and I'm feeling good from an injury perspective and my achilles and hamstring have been feeling pretty good.

Friday - 8+ miles. I went in for a treatment on my achilles in the morning and Dr. Leist said it was looking a lot better and he didn't need to see me for my achilles for 2 weeks instead of my usual weekly treatment which is a good sign. I'm going to go back in a week to get my hamstring treated since they really haven't done anything with it for a while, but I'm definitely showing signs of improvement. I went out for about 8 miles around Memorial park around 5:30 pm. To break up some of the monotony of running laps on the main trail I ran out on the path to 610 along Memorial and then over to Woodway and back through the park and then ran about 20 minutes on the Ho Chi Minh bike trails. It's kind of interesting running back in the woods on the mountain bike trails with lots of twists and turns and ups and downs. I didn't run too hard since I was doing a long run in another 12 hours. I averaged about 7:25 - 7:30 pace and ran for 61 minutes.

Saturday - 16.4 miles - Kenyan Way long run. I had a solid run today and felt pretty good. I was running late like usual but fortunately the group didn't start as early as I thought they might so I ran into them at the corner of Jackson Hill and Feagin and didn't have to try to catch up with them. Unfortunately I lost my car key somewhere on the run. I had dropped my key into the back pocket on my shorts and it came out somewhere on the run. I hadn't realized that my shorts had a regular key pocket so I put it in the back pocket which is really for energy gels or something like that. I realized about 8 miles in that I didn't have my key and I had no idea where it came out. I didn't push the pace too hard until we got into the park and I was feeling pretty good and started picking up the pace. Sam and Andrew had already taken off earlier from the group, but I wasn't sure I was ready to pick up the pace that early so I stayed with the pack. When I was running quicker around the park, Rob caught up with me and was doing a few miles at his marathon pace so I ran a couple ~6:45 miles with him. I backtracked over the first couple miles of the route and looked for my lost key but didn't see it so I had to run back home and add on a couple more miles. I had been planning on doing about 15, but I was happy to get over 16 and my legs felt pretty good. My garmin battery is low now, but I think I did the 16.4 miles in about 1:58 and averaged ~7:10 pace or so.

If our baby doesn't decide to show up in the next 2 days and I get my Sunday and Monday runs in, I should hit 65+ miles for 7 days from Tuesday - Monday. So far this week I've done about 49 miles in the past 5 days.

61 miles last week

I had a great week of training and some really good runs this past week. I ran 7 days in a row and got above 60 miles since sometime back in April and I felt pretty good.

Monday morning I made it out for the Kenyan Way workout and ran 4 miles of hills and had a really good workout with Claudio. We start out at a medium-hard effort to start with and were really pushing it hard the last lap. It was a good workout and I got 8.5 miles in for the day.

Tuesday was a recovery day at lunch in the blistering heat at lunch. I ran ~8.25 miles in 62 minutes and it was hot.

Wednesday I made it out to the Wednesday morning Kenyan Way workout and after about a 1.5 mile warmup did 6 x 2:00 hard with 2:00 recovery jog between each one. I ran with Claudio again and we had a good workout. During the last 2:00 I timed one of our 1/4's and we were doing 5:20 pace. I don't think we were running quite that fast the whole workout, but we had a strong finish. I ran a 3.5 mile cooldown for a total of about 8.25 miles.

Thursday - 5 miles recovery

Friday - 8 miles at the park. The weather was really nice with lower humidity and I headed out the door a little after 9:00 and ran 8 miles in about 58 minutes. I was down around 7:00 pace at the end of the run and averaged about 7:15 pace. The humidity was only about 50% which was a very welcome change.

Saturday - 15.25 miles with Kenyan Way. I almost made it all the way to the start before the group took off and if I were 20 seconds earlier I would have been there for the start. I had a really good run Saturday and averaged about 7:15 pace for the 15+ miles. I wasn't sure how tired I'd be, but the slightly cooler weather and low humidity really made a difference. The last couple of 15+ mile runs I'd done, I had really hit the wall and struggled the last couple of miles, but I felt really good today. Andrew and Jena and another guy picked up the pace and took off midway through the run and I contemplated going with them but just decided to take it easy. With my mileage increase this week, I didn't want to push it too hard so I kept the pace relatively easy and comfortable and enjoyed the run. When we got back to base I ran a couple laps on the cloverleaf with Jace and Nicki to finish the run.

Sunday - 8 miles at park. Sunday evening I headed out to the park for an 8 mile run. It was warm, but I didn't start until about 6:30 so I had a little cloud cover and the sun was starting to set. I didn't wear a watch for the run, but I think I probably was in the 7:20 - 7:30 pace range for most of the run. I was kind of tired and would have been happy to cut the run short but I wanted to make sure I ht 60 miles for the week so I made it through the entire run.

Training for the Badwater Ultramarathon

Ok, I'm not really training for it, but that's what most of my runs feel like these past couple of weeks. I've done about 7 or 8 runs in the last couple of weeks either at lunchtime or in the evening when the heat index has been in the upper 90's or low 100's and it has been hot out. I haven't worn my watch on a number of the recovery days because it is so hot and I don't really want to push myself too hard in the heat. I did wear it on Friday morning when I got out at about 9:00 am and did 7 miles at about a 7:00 avg. I did 14.5 miles last weekend with the Kenyan Way and ran about 15.5 miles this weekend. Yesterday the heat index was 86 at 5:30 in the morning before we even got started so I knew it was going to be a pretty miserable day. I felt good through about 9 miles, but between miles 9 and 10 I could tell that I was getting pretty hot and I couldn't hang with Andrew the last few miles of the run. He was cruising and I dropped back to 7:20 - 7:30 pace the last few miles to finish. It's hard to stay hydrated enough on these runs and I felt like I was like a water faucet running when I finished and it took me most of the day to really get rehydrated. I'll be very happy when it cools off. Tomorrow the Kenyan Way fall speed workouts start so I'll be getting up early to run hills in the morning.

Saturday 7/31 - 13.5 miles

I set the alarm for 5:25 this morning to get up for a 6:00am run, but when it went off I convinced myself that some extra sleep was worth torturing myself running by myself later in the morning. I wasn't sure who all would be showing up today since it was more of an informal run with Sean on vacation and I figured if I was going to end up running by myself then I'd rather get some sleep. I'd imagine that at least several of the people I normally run with were out there, but it's a lot easier to convince myself to sleep in if I assume I'd be running alone. We had gone to the astros game last night and we had tickets in the all-you-can-eat mezzanine section and it was a pretty good deal. $20 for the game and all you can eat hot dogs, nachos, peanuts, popcorn, sodas, and water. Of course my stomach wasn't think it was all that great a deal this morning. I finally made it out the door about 8:45. I did a loop around the park and went out to 610 on Memorial and back on Woodway and then ran down Blossom to the base, did a loop around most of the bayou, down Memorial back to Crestwood and then home. I made sure to plan a route with plenty of water fountains since it would be getting warm out. When I started the run it was about 81 degrees out and the heat index was 86 when I started and it was about 86 and a heat index of 94 when I finished. Because of the heat I didn't push the pace too hard and averaged about 7:40 for the run and finished in about 1:44. I think I stopped at about 6 drinking fountains during he run, but I didn't have any issues with cramping and survived the heat without any real issues. I just wanted to get the mileage in since I didn't get a long run in last weekend and the weekend before that wasn't a very stellar run.

I'm off to chick-fil-a for lunch for a free sandwich since Jeff Keppinger hit the Chick fil-A fowl pole with a HR in the 8th inning so everyone at the game can get a free chicken sandwich today. I don't need to many excuses to go to Chick fil-A for lunch so this one was pretty easy.

Friday 7/30 - 6 miles

I went out for a morning run at the park and ran into my friend Benson and did a couple miles with him during the middle of the run. I ended up doing about 6 miles. I would have gone a couple more but I had an appointment for my leg treatment and had to get back home for that. The doctor found a really sore spot on my achilles that was sensitive to the touch. It's feeling a lot better after the treatment. It still doesn't really bother me while I'm running but I hope that we can get it under control and it doesn't flare up into something really bad.

Thursday - 7.5 miles

I went out after work and did about 7.5 miles around the Woodlands. I was feeling pretty decent and averaged about 7:10 pace. My achilles was a little stiff the first 1/2 - 3/4 of a mile but felt pretty good after that and didn't bother me.