One hour of skating practice and then my first 10k for almost a decade this afternoon. I am going to feel this in the morning.

I can't even imagine, I think I would go crazy. It is bad enough on my rest days that I always feel like going out and doing -something- and completely ignoring my rest day.. if I was forced to break for a while due to injury I would probably find many bad habits.



In other news... every time I get within striking distance of Northwood_DK, He pulls off some huge run and buries me again :) I was within 17k or so and was contemplating running a little further than I should to try to catch up and then he runs an awesome 14 mile run. Well on good news, he probably saved me from hurting myself trying to run 13 miles myself a little too soon before I was ready :)

Dola...

Sometimes I love Strava. Went for a lunch time bike ride today, and ended up riding a 5 mile segment that was pretty heavily ridden (for my area at least since it is not a city or anything). I look at the list and see my Doctor is on the list from last year. Turns out he's a pretty decent cyclist :)

This is why I love Strava. The segment component is genius.

Glad to keep you on your toes. :D

I spend the weekend in Copenhagen with the family and it turned out this was the weekend of the Copenhagen Marathon. The start and finish was literally on the other side of the road from the hotel and my wife almost talked me inn to register the day before the race. In the end I could not get my head around it but I did get a nice 10km done around the lakes in the center of Copenhagen.

Watching the race did inspire me for today’s run. The pace I ran today will give me a finish time at 3:45.

Fucking studs up in here.

Well I have to go out of town again this weekend, so my long-shot pipe dream of hitting 120 by the end of the month is officially over. I will probably end up at about 90.

You guys that have already hit numbers like 160 are amazing, hats off to you.

I am going camping this weekend and next week is my taper week before my Race on June 1st. So I'm likely going to find time in between thunderstorms today and tomorrow to run, and then only easy stuff all next week for me. I'm 3k from my goal though so pretty happy with what I was able to do this month.

I was hoping to get 80 miles running in this month and I hit that number yesterday. Shooting for 100 now.

Maybe we need a less intimidating C25K thread for us beginning runners. :)

No shame in going shorter distances and/or more slowly. The slowest runner/walker in this thread is lapping well over half the population, 'cause they're on the couch. ;)

I have purchased a mountain bike today, want to ride it a couple of days per week for some cross training/active recovery, so i'll run 3 times per week, ride the bike two, and rest the other two days.

My wife woke up at 5am this morning to go run. She has been suffering with the sudden 80 degrees with 80+% humidity we have had lately. With her bad lung condition, I guess it is hitting her harder than me.. she had to walk a good percentage of her run yesterday afternoon and she is feeling very frustrated and discouraged right now because of it.

Still want to improve, but hit a fun milestone a few minutes ago: first time doing 10K in under an hour.

{waves}

Dang, nice, Ben. When is your half marathon? :D

Need to get back to running here - been riding my bike a lot with my son (did today), but need to get out there w/o it.

Hehehe. No, I don't see me ever having interest in doing anything much longer than a 10K. My best guess is that 8 miles is as far as I'll ever run. (My longest run so far is 7 miles.)

I suspect that if I could weigh in the range of what I suspect you weigh without doing much/any meaningful exercise, I'd be spending a lot more time on the couch too. :p

I saw that run, nice job!

Next month's Strava Challenge is the Junedoggle. Similar to the May Massive, it awards badges for 40K/80K/120K/160K run for the month of June.

Update on this: after further experimentation and observation, I'm fairly certain that this issue was caused by my armband not holding the phone snugly enough to my arm. I tested with the phone in the car, as mentioned in this thread, and it was perfect. Later on I noticed that when I put it in the cupholder of the jogging stroller, the mileage was also perfect. But in my pocket or an armband and it was always reporting the run as longer than it really was. For the past 3-4 weeks I've just been running with it in my hand with a firm grip. Now when I overlay my runs onto Google Maps, they're extremely close. Today I got 3.16 miles on the phone, 3.16 miles on Google Maps. I'm coming in within .03ish miles of Google Maps on every single run since I started just holding it.

Well, I didn't run farther than that that many times before mine, really. My training plan basically had me adding a mile to each weekly long run. I had some extra weeks in there, but there were some long runs that I missed too (one weekend we were in OC MD and I just ran 4.5 consecutive mornings). Maybe 6-8 times at 7+? I really don't think you'd be very far off.

Me, I've been sitting on my couch too much and feel good finishing 3mi (and today, did not).

Looks like a few of you have already joined, but there's an additional Strava Challenge for the 10K runners out there.

Any Way 10K

Run a 10K between June 15 and 16. Rankings are sorted by fasted time.

need to find a good all-downhill 10k stretch.

Here are my proposed realigned teams for June, based on preliminary May Massive results. This can also be used for the Any Way 10K Challenge as well.

Team Trout
Thomas Nordskov (Northwood_DK)
Stephen Venable (digamma)
Dave Harris (Fidatelo)
Ivan Carillo (Icy)
Doug Timms (lighthousekeeper)
Daniel Schoonover (DanGarion)
Jason Wood (sabotai)
David Driscoll-Carignan (Draft Dodger)

Team Colossal Squid
Alan Baker (Alan T)
Ben Lewis (Ben E Lou)
Richard Dixon (Radii)
David Gonzalez (kingfc22)
Rob Ordona (AnalBumCover)
Ryan Stevenson (Ryan S)
Chris Shue (Subby)
Lorena Marks (Dodgerchick)

Just a warning, I'm finishing up a training cycle and have two races in June. I don't start my next training cycle till the end of the month, so will primarily just be base building in between the races during June. I don't nearly expect to run as much next month as this month. My best guess is that I'll put in right around 100 miles.

Now if there is one of these things in August, watch out! My half marathon training plan will likely have me around 200 miles in that month :)

Having ignored this thread for a while, I finally peeked in today. Just signed up for Runkeeper and Strava. I have been doing a lot of walking lately thanks to my new pedometer (averaging over 10,000 steps a day), but I've been thinking I should give running a try again. Maybe this will help push me into doing that. Anyhow, I joined the FOFC group.

Cool, welcome!

I lucked out, I'm running a half-marathon on the 16th so I will complete this challenge without any extra effort on my part :)

Which half-marathon are you running?

The Manitoba Marathon: Home - Manitoba Marathon

Last year I set a PB of 1:35:35. I'd like to beat that time this year, but I think the odds are against me. Weather will play a major role, as always, and last years weather was about as perfectly suited to me as I could hope for.

So I'm done running for the month. Today and tomorrow I am taking off to rest for a 10k race on Saturday. My goal for the month was to run 110 miles, and I ended up running 123 miles (198 km) [Strava only shows 192k, not sure why the difference, but no big deal].

Either way, I'm pretty happy with the month and the training I put in and I think I am very ready for the 10k race. My training went as I hoped, and my legs will be fresh and I don't have any injuries so all things considered pretty much everything in my control is good.

My goal for this year was to finish a 10k race in under an hour, and during my training I came close so the adrenaline boost from the race should hopefully be sufficient to get me to my goal. According to my VO2 score of 33 (which is not great at all), I should be able to run it around a 58 minute and I'm actually hopeful that I could beat that even, but 1 hour is my main goal.

My big concern is going to be the weather though.. considering 60 degrees is the ideal max temperature, this weekend is going to be hot here, 80+% humidity with temperature in the high 90s (Saturday high of 96 degrees). At race time of 9am, it should be around 77 degrees I am thinking and a 70-80% humidity.. which is not ideal at all.

Based on Daniels table for projected adverse impact of high temperature for 5k times, the difference between 60 degrees and 80 degrees is almost a minute. If that is expanded out to a 10k race, my guess is that would remove my 2 minute buffer and put me dangerously close to the 1 hour time I am trying to beat... So I guess we will see how it goes..

Good luck, I don't participate in a lot of organized races but I usually do better than I expect. You've prepared well so you should do fine. Just taking a couple days off will help a lot.

One thing with the humidity - protect those nips. I've done two organized runs this month, one in high humidity and last weekend just a 10K in a steady drizzle. Both races had a lot of guys suffering from the red streaks. Looks like pure torture.

The days off will help a lot, as well the adrenaline. The other thing I've found that makes races so much different is the 'chase' mindset. I find I'm always trying to hunt down the person in front of me (assuming they aren't pulling away from me) which leads me to run just that little bit faster than I probably would if I was alone.

Alan - good luck in your 10k!

I am supposed to be in a sling for another week and a half. Once it is off I am going to give running a try. Ribs are pretty good for the most part (I can laugh and sneeze without pain). Doc says no bike until September, but we'll see about that.

just signed up for both Strava and Runkeeper after doing mission #1 of Zombies, Run! Did it part walking part jogging for 38 minutes. In fact, I went out and ran for my own pleasure for the first time IN MY LIFE, really. Always hated running and only have done it when I was forced to in the past. But it felt nice out there tonight, enjoyed the music while walking and running intervals...

Don't know how often I'll be doing this but my schedule with the dojo should clear up some with the Summer schedule and I've been wanting to go out there and at least walk more...

Which of these two has an FOFC group I can join?

FM

Strava has the FOFC group. Look earlier in this thread for the link. (I'm on my phone, don't know how to link)

Awesome FrogMan, welcome to the club! :)

thanks, found the link. Couldn't find it via search as it always tried to find something in my local area...

FM

oh, and I'm probably showing up as Steve Gougeon in both places. Don't remember entering a username at either place...

FM

Dola, anyone else using GarminSync to push stuff to Strava? I've been finding it has massive delays lately. For instance I uploaded todays commute home to Garmin Connect right when I got home. Over 5 hours later and it still hasn't shown up on Strava.

I did do the 'sign up for Strava again to make sure it works after May 30th' thing after my last run, so maybe that's the issue? But this isn't the first time it's taken hours and hours to upload, either.

Welcome Kodos and Frogman!

Since I have started to do cross training, one day run and one day mountain bike, i feel i'm improving a lot while feeling fresh and not tired the next day.

Running is way more demanding than biking (also harder on the joints) so the biking days are like semi rest days, even when i'm also starting to push myself more with the bike.

I have lost 3 pounds in the past 3 weeks, and by the runkeeper goal set, i'm in good pace to my 20 pounds loss goal until the end of the year, but the last days i'm having a hard time controlling my hunger, probably due to the extra calories burned so i excuse myself saying "i burned a good amount today so i can afford this" and i really do... if i wanted to keep my weight, not to keep losing.

Welcome to the club FM!



Garminsync has been having delays alot lately. Best guess I can see is that there has been more users than originally anticipated, and it has been causing them more resources and thus the slowness. I've been seeing the same as you.


I have had something similar happen the past month or two, where my fast weight loss has slowed down to roughly 1/2 pound a week. I've read alot on it and what I have found is the more you push yourself physically, the more that you'll need to refuel. Intense training on a calorie deficit is just as unhealthy as overeating, or perhaps even more so. From what I have read, many people who train hard for marathons (80+ miles run a week) actually gain a little weight during their training cycle. Your hunger is just your body letting you know that it does need more.

There is still much that I don't understand about nutrition combined with exercise, and there are some great books that have been recommended to me that I haven't read yet on the subject, but the initial summary that I have come to understand is that you can work on weight loss as your primary goal and keep a base level of exercise to retain fitness (often marathoners or the like will try to lose weight in base-building pre-training plan stage), but once you start back in on the intense training schedule, you really need to keep the number of calories your body needs or you'll end up suffering from poor workouts, lack of energy during your exercise, etc.

FOFC May Massive Results (final, unless someone is late in uploading results):

Team A
Chris Shue
160 Ben Lewis
80 Richard Dixon
80 Stephen Venable
Jason Wood
160 Northwood_DK
-----------------------
480 pts

Team B
40 Rob Ordona
160 Alan Baker
40 Ryan Stevenson
80 Dave Harris
40 David Gonzalez
40 Doug Timms
40 Icy
-----------------------
440 pts

Wow - was a lot closer than I expected!

Great job everyone. I enjoy seeing everyone's stuff each upload too.

Did my first run this morning. Just a 20 minute run to get started and not get too ambitious. Last summer, I ran for 3 miles on my first run, which was a little too much. Wanted to be a little more conservative this time.

Anyhow, I ran 2.15 miles in 20 minutes for a 9:19 pace, with mile splits of 9:26 & 9:19. Not a bad start. I think all the walking I've been doing recently helped me a bit. I walked 3 miles afterward to cool down.

Can't get my info from RunKeeper to Strava. Must be a step I am missing...

Good job on the run. I'm not sure if there is a way that I know of to sync directly from runkeeper to strava. There are a few tools that people use to sync to both runkeeper and strava at the same time. If you are using the runkeeper app on your phone, the most common that I know of is people switch to using ismoothrun app instead and that then can save to both strava and runkeeper I believe.

Now that your run is already on runkeeper, you can manually go to your run in runkeeper and at the bottom of the page viewing that run there is an option to export to GPX. If you export that you can then import that file in to strava manually.

Well.. today sucked. my worst race ever probably. It was just way too hot out there. It affected everyone, so my overall place wasn't affected, but my goal for a personal best time was shattered by it. I think I ended up finishing 28th overall and 4th in my age group (out of 5.. heh) I made too many mistakes though...

My goal was to start out at my pace of 9:20, but I ran the first mile at 9:10 instead. The second mile was better, at a 9:17 pace, but I literally ran into a wall on the third mile, not even halfway through the race. The third mile I ended up slowing to a 10:10 pace and it was all downhill from there.

A little after the third mile, I had a horrible side stitch that forced me to have to stop and walk at times.. eventually it worked itself out by about mile 5, but I saw that I had only 5 minutes to go the last mile for my goal and decided to not even bother and ran the last mile in a comfortable 11:30 pace.

I couldn't believe how badly I blew up and wasn't sure exactly why.. it couldn't be just from the weather even though it was so hot, everyone suffered. Even when I had to walk, I had hardly anyone pass me at all.. and even by the end when I was struggling, I still passed tons of people.. so I think everyone just had a rough day of it.

I finally saw once I uploaded my run, my average heart rate for the entire run was 171.. that is crazy. When I hit the wall at mile 3, my heart rate had hit 183 which is pretty much my max limit ever.. No wonder I crashed and burned badly. I love Strava's suffer score.... it told me the following:



Extreme sufferfest.. heh :)

My highest suffer score ever was when I ran 11 miles and only had a 193.. When I had my best 10k time a few weeks ago, my suffer score was 147..

So I guess this is what the effect heat plays on the body when running ...

I will try again in another 10k run in 2 weeks and hopefully the weather will be better. So dissapointed.

I'm not all that far from you and I can't imagine running in this weather. it's brutal out there. no reason to be bummed about that effort at all

Unfortunately, it seems like iSmoothRun isn't available for Android phones yet. I was able to manually import my activities to Strava. Thanks for the help!

Welp, I was sitting on the couch watching The Twilight Zone and decided to check on this thread. I haven't had a chance to work out at all with the kid's after school schedule and planning their trip to SoCal, my time was limited. I kept telling myself, they're gone, I'm just gonna vedge, I'll start tomorrow. But, after catching up on this thread and following your's guys activities on Strava I felt like a lazy ass and put my running shoes on and stepped outside.

Thanks for the motivation, studs.

Anyone having trouble lately getting iSmoothRun to update Strava? It's updating all of my other apps, but I've had to manually upload the file for Strava the last three or four days.

Alan - you may have mentioned this earlier in the thread but I'm too lazy to look ;)

What device do you use to monitor your heart rate? I'm looking into adding that piece so I can increase the data I receive on each run.

I have a garmin heart rate monitor strap that I wear around my chest. It pairs up with my garmin watch and records the data on my watch while I am running. The watch records my pace, distance, heart rate as well as foot cadence (from a seperate foot pod I wear on my shoe).

Works fine for me.

I use a polar h7 that is compatible with iPhone 5 and all the apps.

I don't think I am going to get anywhere near 40k this month as I will be doing a bit of travelling over the next few weeks, so that means lots of hotel treadmills rather than road running. I also want to get a few miles under my belt on the bike.

strava site makes you realize how many crazy runners exist in the world. the elderly australian couple who are running a marathon each day for a year (circling australia). some dude went on a 100+ mile run yesterday (at a pace of ~15min/mi - which was like a 28 hour run). these are things i didn't think the human body was capable of.

This is one of the things I have noticed as well. I was curious to see who the leader was after Day 1 of June and some guy had well over 100 KM's run.

I saw that too. Unreal. There's a documentary about 3 guys who attempt to run across the Sahara desert. They run 50 miles a day for... I dunno, can't remember how many days. Great documentary, it's amazing how far we can push our bodies:

I spoke too soon, I get an error message too now, but the routines are being exported properly regardless that error message.

I disconnected then reconnected, and it synced this morning. *shurg*

Humidity is below 60% for the first time in a while today, I only have a 3 mile run planned, but excited that hopefully I won't finish looking like I swam in a lake!

The wife and daughters are out of town this week so I'm getting to run during the best part of the day. 94% humidity here this morning and in the mid 70s before 7am. My glasses fogged up during the run. Felt pretty good though.

in strava, you can see glimpes of your "personal bests" in places (like notification for a particiular activity you set 2nd best PR for 2 miles). If you upgrade to strava premium, can you see a listing of all of your PRs listed in one place?

No, unfortunately not if I understand what you are asking.

The way that I best can do this and think its available for non-premium also is to go to the Training tab at the top, then choose "My Activities"

You can then sort what you are looking at by distance, miles, number of activities or personal records.

So if you click on personal records, you can then see which runs during that time frame had some kind of personal records that you can then investigate further. It could include segment records too though.

Only personal record listing in one place that I know of is on your profile and it only shows your PR in 1k, 1 mile, 5k, 10k, half-marathon, marathon

Strava's tracking of PRs is pretty wonky. For example, it says my PR for mile is 8:25. Yet I've had runs where I've had mile splits in under 8 minutes.

Also, I don't see Personal Records under My Activities tab - maybe its a premium feature.

I know strava does not count a PR for a stretch with a negative incline. Like if you had a mile stretch of road all down hill, it will give you the trophy for it, but won't save it as your PR if I understand correctly. So maybe that happened to you

Sorry, told you the wrong place. Not under My activities. Its under Training Calendar

Just a thought.. if you are looking for a much deeper stat dig into your runs, you might want to look at SportTracks.

It is not a website, it is PC software (They have an online website version that sucks though, and they don't support Mac with the downloadable software in case that affects you). Other than that though, for much better dig into the stats and power with them, you can install plugins that do most of what you are looking for. The free trial lets you do 90 days worth of runs, and most of the plugins are either free or crippled shareware that let you do something like 90 days as well. So you can see if you like it enough to decide to buy it or not.

For instance, here is what my 5km records page looks like in this. I also love doing my training planning in this app too.

Did 8 miles this morning. It didn't kill me, but I'm not feeling particularly motivated to go any further, either.

Today June 5, 2013 is National Running Day.

I put together my summer training plan for running. For anyone interested in some of the details, I finally updated a post to my running log: Front Office Football Central - View Single Post - Couch to ??k (A RL running dynasty)

Probably boring for non-stats folks though. Bunch of technical talk and pictures of graphs/charts

Are there online tools to build a running schedule that don't involve training for a race? Basically I'd like to enter in that my current best 10K time is 58:00, the most I've run is 8 miles, and the most I want to run is 8 miles, and have a tool build something out for me. I've found lots of "enter the race day and the distance of the race" type things...

You could perhaps use the Higdon Spring training plan found here: Hal Higdon Training Programs it primarily helps build a running base without the focus on a race. Since it is working on building the base though, there is very little speed exercises in it that would be focused more on improving your running speed. Your 10k time would naturally improve as your aerobic base improves though.

From what it sounds like though, I personally would suggest that you actually train for a race, even if you don't plan on running a race. Because of how fitness vs fatigue works, it is very unhealthy to continuously add more and more and more miles on end. Eventually the fatigue would overtake you. So it is important to have recovery time or down weeks in the plan and most race training schedules that are good have that factored in.

I think picking out a race training plan will be exactly what you want. It will give you plans to work on your aerobic base while also mixing in speed work such as tempo runs or intervals and give you a good time frame to do it in. I would personally say you should pick a date 12 weeks from now and set that as your "race date" and then work on the race plan for those 12 weeks. At the end, take a week of less running to recover and then you can do it again or pick a new goal or whatever you want. YOu don't have to actually run a race to benefit from the training program.

If you do go that way, the very first training plan I used was Runners world smartcoach found here: Rodale Central Authentication Service (CAS) Login You put in the date of the "race", put in a recent running time (such as your 58:00 for the 10k) and then put in how many miles a week and intensity of your workouts and it will put a plan together for you with the times you should run in those workouts.

I use some more complex training plans now myself and use Daniels spreadsheets for determining running place, I would be happy to share that info with folks interested too.

Dola, forgot to say, in the smart coach plan it does let you specify your running distance for your race to be 12k (7.4 or so miles), but because of how aerobic bases work, it will have your long runs be much more than 8 miles. So if the max you ever want to run is 8 miles for your long runs, then you could actually train for a 5k race. Or another option is when it has a 10 mile long run scheduled, you just stop at 8 if you want.

The plans are just a guide, never have to do more than you really want.

Thanks!

Heh. The Hal Higdon program includes "hill runs" once a week. Hehehe. I suspect I'd have to drive 50 miles or so to find some of those. ;)

Looking around all of these suckers, so far the effin' RunKeeper half-marathon in 2:00 plan looks like exactly what I want to do, except for the part where you have to run a half-marathon. :p

We'll see.

Hills is a common issue for people who live in flatter areas. The most common recommendation I hear from more experienced runners is if you can't find hills near by, you can substitute in stadiums or other equivalent steps instead. Others have suggested highway overpasses since they usually have an incline of some sort on them too.

So I think I've settled on just doing my own thing. How does this look?

	WEIGHTS	RUNNING
MONDAY	OFF	OFF
TUESDAY	chest/triceps	Tempo 60 Minutes
WEDNESDAY	OFF	Slow 45-60 Minutes
THURSDAY	back/biceps	OFF
FRIDAY	OFF	Intervals
SATURDAY	legs/shoulders	OFF
SUNDAY	OFF	Long Slow

I can't comment on the strength part of the schedule since I am pretty negligent in that area myself. For the running, probably is fine. it has more speed work and less aerobic work that I personally like for myself, but sounds like what you are looking for. Some reading material that may interest you along those lines if interested are:

Run Less, Run Faster - A book from runner's world based on research done by Furman institute of running and scientific training. They put together their approach to try to make running more approachable for people with less time.

And an example of a marathon training plan from them: http://marathon.harvard.edu/images/first_first.pdf

Their attempt is to try to help people run faster without having to spend as much time on the aerobic base, and there have been people who have been successful with this program. Basically they have a schedule similar to what you are trying to put together, but do it with 3 running days a week. An interval run, a tempo run and a long run.

I know much of the stuff I read and follow have issues with Furman's stuff on this issue that they completely ignore building a solid aerobic base and they disagree with Furman's inferred belief that "easy miles" are "junk miles". But this might be something you are interested in looking at more since it has a good deal of scientific study towards a plan that looks similar to what you want.

Dola, That link to FIRST's marathon training plan is probably not really relevant for you.. here is a better one for you, a link to their 5k training plan:

http://www2.furman.edu/sites/first/D...ram-metric.pdf

It has 3 exercises a week, Intervals, tempo Run, long run. The long runs never get beyond 12k (roughly 7.something miles) which seems to be what you indicate you want. Give it a look

Long-term, that sounds *perfect* for me. Right now while I still have 25-30 pounds to lose and am not feeling overworked at my current level of training, if I don't get suckerered into doing the half-marathon training, I'm probably going to stick with the 5-6 days per week of cardio for another 4-6ish weeks, then drop it down to something like the 4-day plan I posted above around the middle of the summer, then down to interval/tempo/long later on.

I ran the NY marathon using the 3x a week plan. It was about 3 minutes slower than my Boston time, which is a very reasonable difference given the relatively more difficult NY course and crowding issues in the first mile there.

My conclusion was that it is a viable plan for a good performance, but maybe not peak performance. (Not sure if anyone is really going for peak performance.)

just came back from a pretty cool little 3k with my 16yo son. He's a hockey goalie and has never been big on cardio. He teaches karate with me and is even a second degree black belt, but he barely trains anymore. I'm hoping I can drag him outside for a few runs every now and then... :)

Kinda felt good that on that distance, daddy could still kick his boy's butt. ;) I kept encouraging him though and he finished the 2 miles almost 90 seconds faster than what he did at school just a few weeks ago. Just showing me that he simply didn't pace himself right back then and had nobody to chase after...

FM

As down as I was about last week's performance in my 10k, I'm absolutely pumped today. Decided to run a spontaneous 5k race (my training plan had an easy 3 mile scheduled, but I ran a not so easy 3 miles) :)

Days like today help me realize all of those days putting in the easy runs of long miles is worth it! Official scorekeeper time for the race had me at 26:32. My watch was a little slower 26:57, but either way still my best ever 5k :)

Getting close to a 20 minute improvement on my first ever 5k race last October 21st where I had a 44:30

Alan, that's awesome!

Agreed. Nice to see your hard work is paying off with very tangible results.

Congrats Alan, nice run!

I've been messing with different options for exporting nike+ information and I've found a good tool that will export into gpx files. I'll be joining the FOFC group soon - get ready to see the most boring running routes humanly possible. A lot of boxes and straight lines. It's what happens when you live in the middle of a mile by mile grid.

Heh, no worries from me. I live in a 1/2 x 1/2 mile grid.

I always run at the local track. :)

the maps of your runs always crack me up :)

FM

and Alan, well done! Are there 5k races like that every week where you live?

FM

Yep. They're a bit boring. Some day I may find a nice trail to run on. :)

fwiw, I'm still scouting the surroundings to give me some routes I will know beforehand how long I'll run. Right now I'm still going out with a vague idea of how long I want to go but I often end up taking a turn here or there to add some distance to my run...

FM

I use this site to find routes mainly for mountain bike, but it's also useful for running:

You can search by name, location, short by distance, etc.

Wikiloc - GPS trails and waypoints of the World

After taking care of my two kids suffering a cold or light flu, it was just a matter of time, both my wife and me are sick today too.

I have pain in my throat, my nose is pouring all the time and i feel tired. If the evolution is like on my kids, it will go down to my lungs in a day or two and stay there for a week with heavy cough.

What is my biggest worry right now? that I might not be able to run or bike or that maybe i shouldn't even if i can.

What do you guys do in those situations? just say "f@¢k you body" and keep training? or to take some rest days to recover?

If i end having to stop training for a week, i'm going to at least do an strict 1 week diet plan to lose weight as i have not been able to do it while training hard.

Damn winter/srpring is being unusually long in Spain, past year at this date we had the max temperature here (104F) and today is raining and 70F. We have 2 warm sunny days, and then storms, wind and low temperature for this time of the year, so it's so easy to get sick as you don't know what kind of clothes to wear.

When I visited the incubators of death, i mean my niece and nephew, they got me pretty sick. I couldn't even really sit up for a couple of days...

I say take the time off and get better.. don't let it turn into pneumonia.

In Massachusetts there are tons and tons of 5k races for charity every week, virtually I could easily find one to sign up for any time I want. The one I did yesterday is just a low key 5k (Costs $5) held by a local running club every week. No prizes or shirts or anything, just a chance to go out and race each week if you want. I enjoy doing the races, but try not to do them too much as I end up running way too hard and it wrecks the rest of my training plan if I am not careful about scheduling it in. :)



For a while, I used RouteLoops: Free, custom route planner for biking and running mapping . You don't even have o search for routes, you just put in your address and how far you want to run and it gives you a loop to run of that length (or as close as it can find). Some of the routes it gives back are a little crazy, so sometimes I would have to have it try over again a few times til I found one that I liked.

Now though, I've pretty much gotten all of the possible combinations within 10 miles of my house figured out so I just plan my daily runs by hand using Garmin Connect. Runkeeper has a route creator that is similar where you just map it out by hand on the road and at the end it comes back with the distance, but I like Garmin Connect's better solely due to how it presents the total elevation of the run so I know how much trouble I am getting myself into with hills.


Luckily for me, somehow even with 3 kids and a wife that works in the school system I haven't gotten severely sick since I got back from my back surgery in December. So I don't have a ton of first hand experience on this one. The rule as I understand it that many runners stick to is something like the neck rule:

If its above the neck (such as a head cold), sniffling and runny nose and such, its generally considered ok to go out for your run, but be aware of your body and don't push too hard, just take it easy.

If it is below the neck, such as a chest cold, take the time off. In addition, if you're running a fever of say 97 F (37.2 C) or more, you should probably take it off as the energy you spend in running could probably be better spent fighting whatever it is you have.

The only caveat I've read is just be cautious if deciding to run with a head cold, you don't want to run with a sinus infection or anything, and you definitely don't want to push yourself too hard and make yourself even more sick as that can sideline you for far longer than a few days.

You won't lose your fitness that you have gained from running in taking off 3 days or such. So my personal opinion, unless you have an important race or something that you absolutely don't want to miss, just take the few days and use it as an extended recovery phase which will reset your Training Stress Balance and make you fresher when you're better.

Up to 19 members in the FOFC Strava club. Pretty impressive!

Next step - upload a profile pic. I don't care how hideous you look. :D