Official Strava/Runkeeper Thread

[AlexB]

That course just isn't very friendly! Good luck on the race, hope you achieve your goals

[FrogMan]

Originally Posted by Alan T

A couple of big things for me this week...

Right now it looks like on my Wednesday easy run, I should pass 2000 miles recorded on Strava. It depends on how much I end up running during today's track workout though. I could end up actually passing 2000 miles on my Thursday tempo run instead though.

Also this weekend is my goal Half-marathon that I've been training for this spring. I'm wanting to break my Personal record from last fall for a half but right now am not feeling super confident about that. My last two week long runs have been a little short of horrible. I'm suffering a bit with the sudden heat change the last few weeks here. Running in 85-90 degree heat with direct sunlight and 90+% humidity has been rough for me to get re-acclimated to so far. Luckily the Half marathon is at 7am, so it might only be in the 70s at that time I hope..

The other issue is this course is about 4 times more hilly than my previous half personal record course was:



There seriously is very little flat parts in the entire course, and the hill at mile 3 is about a 5% overall grade, but the first half of it is closer to 7-9% grade climb.

I'll have all of three of my kids there to cheer me on for Father's day though, the first time that all of them have been there to watch me in a half before.

Congrats ont the milestone but dang, that's a harsh course! You sure that spike is "only" 7-9%? Looks almost like 15-20% The scale is kinda wonky though. That spike is 80-90 feet up but over half a mile... Did I get this right?

You plan on letting it all out on the long downhills to make up time?

Sounds like a sweet good time when you got your loved ones cheering for you on race day. And on Father's Day no less! Have fun!

Sadly, I'll be doing me second race in a row without my cheer team. This Sunday's race is the craziest of my races, a 13.5K romp through the staircases of the Old Quebec City. Some 1925 steps (1277 going up, 648 going down) and plenty of running around town. This is gonna be rough. No clue about time or pacing other than I'll try to keep my running pace as close to my 10 or 15K pace, but the stairs might throw a wrench into that plan as fatigue wears the legs down toward the end... The last 2 km might be a challenge since I the last big staircase is 309 steps going up and happens with 2 km to go...

No cheer team for me because my wife's doing four hip hop dance shows with her school and my youngest son has a swimming meet all weekend long. My race start is 8am and my son's swimming meet is at 1pm so I'll come back home, shower and will head out with him to the pool before attending my wife's last show of the weekend on Sunday night. This'll be a pretty full Father's Day for me...

As for Athlinks, as I said in my dynasty thread, it doesn't track races in Canada but most races I'm going to seem to use the same timing chip provider, Sportstats that have a searchable database so I can track "rivals" with whom I can sorta compare my times...

FM

[HerRealName]

That is a crazy course Alan. That hill between 2 and 3 makes the most legendary hill climb look tame.



Hopefully the weather cooperates and you can make a run at your PR.

[Alan T]

Hit 2000 miles this morning right at the peak of my tempo progression run when I was going the fastest. I found it is very tough taking a photo while running that fast lol.

Originally Posted by FrogMan

dang, that's a harsh course! You sure that spike is "only" 7-9%? Looks almost like 15-20% The scale is kinda wonky though. That spike is 80-90 feet up but over half a mile... Did I get this right?

Here is a different view of the hill elevation for this Sunday:



The entire thing is roughly 1/2 mile, but it has that dip down and re-climb near the top. The bulk of it is roughly 76ft in 1/3rd of a mile for an average grade of 4.5% which isn't too too bad. The tough part is the beginning where it is 8-9% for the first 1/5th of a mile though and then it becomes a little less steep.

I think as long as I take it fairly easy up that hill, it is only 1/3rd of a
mile so I can bank some time in order to not thrash my legs or cardio pushing too much on the hill.

[FrogMan]

the scales they use for the Y and the X axis are just out of whack. I mean, on the elevation side, it's 197 pixels for 100 feet of elevation while on the distance side, it's 92 pixels for a mile, or 92 pixels for 5280 feet.

When you look at the peak in either of your elevation graphs, you'd have to be climbing with your hands on the ground to be able to go up...

Still 4-5% elevation is nothing to sneeze at, nor is 8-9% over maybe 1000 feet. Probably better not to kill yourself trying to keep your pace intact, put some time in the bank on the downhill and keep the HR as even as possible on the uphills...

Good luck with it!

FM

[Fidatelo]

Off to do the half in the Manitoba Marathon this morning. Been raining cats and dogs for the past 24 hours and is supposed to continue all day, but its currently stopped for the moment. Here's hoping it stays that way for a few more hours!

[Dutch]

Originally Posted by FrogMan

the scales they use for the Y and the X axis are just out of whack. I mean, on the elevation side, it's 197 pixels for 100 feet of elevation while on the distance side, it's 92 pixels for a mile, or 92 pixels for 5280 feet.

When you look at the peak in either of your elevation graphs, you'd have to be climbing with your hands on the ground to be able to go up...

Still 4-5% elevation is nothing to sneeze at, nor is 8-9% over maybe 1000 feet. Probably better not to kill yourself trying to keep your pace intact, put some time in the bank on the downhill and keep the HR as even as possible on the uphills...

Good luck with it!

FM

When I was stationed overseas in Germany, I ran a morning 3 mile run that included a steep climb for about 1,000 feet. I couldn't tell you the grade, but when I first encountered it, I would just put my head down and look at my feet...but I couldn't make it to the top. Walking uphill proved more painful...so it became my goal to conquer that hill (which came at about the 2 mile marker along the route). Over the course of a couple of weeks I would make it to the top and be forced to stop and walk for a moment....and then a couple more weeks it was conquered and I didn't have to stop at all. So it took a month to beat it. And once beaten, I felt like a million dollars reaching the top and continuing on with the random onlooker being my imaginary fan-base.

[HerRealName]

Originally Posted by Fidatelo

Off to do the half in the Manitoba Marathon this morning. Been raining cats and dogs for the past 24 hours and is supposed to continue all day, but its currently stopped for the moment. Here's hoping it stays that way for a few more hours!

You only need 90 minutes of no rain anyway. Good luck!

[Alan T]

Well, I felt good about how I handled my hill. The wind on the other hand I did not do as good of a job handling. In the end, I feel that I did pretty well on my race today. Mile 11 was the one that killed me though. I think I mentally checked out for a bit there.

Ended up coming in 3 seconds too slow for my Personal record. Oh well

Time to start back up marathon training for the fall.

[Fidatelo]

Originally Posted by Alan T

Well, I felt good about how I handled my hill. The wind on the other hand I did not do as good of a job handling. In the end, I feel that I did pretty well on my race today. Mile 11 was the one that killed me though. I think I mentally checked out for a bit there.

Ended up coming in 3 seconds too slow for my Personal record. Oh well

Time to start back up marathon training for the fall.

3 seconds? Sounds like you're well within the acceptable margin of error. PB!

[Fidatelo]

Race recap: started out just misty, which was nice. I got trapped really bad over the first mile, and I used a lot of energy just trying to fight my way out of the slower people around me. Lots of zigs and zags and up on the boulevards, which sucked because they were muddy and slippery. The next several miles went ok although my pace slowed sooner than I had hoped. Nothing too bad though, and after 8 miles I was still pretty happy where things were at.

Things went downhill from there. The mist turned to a downpour for most of the second half. My right leg started to tighten up and by mile 10 I really hit the wall. I was starting to limp/run and basically my left leg did all of the pushing for the last 2 miles. My shorts also became so waterlogged that they were falling down, so I had to repeatedly pull them up as I ran, which was probably more mentally exhausting than anything but very annoying. I managed to fight through and get to the end, and my leg feels fine in the hours since, but it wasn't a super pleasant final 20-30 minutes.

Stats:
1:36:19 official finish (1:34:01 last year)
43:13 6 mile split (39:50 last year)
124th overall (106 last year)
8/195 M35-39 (13/239 last year)

Overall the run was bitter-sweet. My time was indeed slower than the past 2 years, but was not too far off and if I look back 2 months I can say that I made very solid progress. Coming in top 10 for my age/gender category was a nice surprise, but its tempered a bit by the lower turnout this year. Ultimately no injuries and a decent finish, with visible strides made over recent weeks, which adds fuel to make me want to come back stronger for next year. Just need to fight through those winter blahs!

[FrogMan]

Kudos to both Alan and Fidatelo, great work guys!

As for me, kinda crossposting from my dynasty... It was a crazy day yesterday but a crazy weekend overall...

My son had a two day swim meet (Saturday & Sunday afternoon) while my wife was dancing in 4 shows (Saturday & Sunday afternoon and evening) with her hip hop dance school. So yesterday I had my race, then "ran" back home to pick up my son, spend the afternoon at the pool and "ran" back home to have dinner and go see my wife. It was an awesome Father's Day, wouldn't have it any other way.

I finished my 13.5K Staircase Challenge, that my Garmin actually reported as 13.9 km, in 1:14:19. Average pace is kinda unimportant cause it doesn't compare to anything else I've done before.

Placements:
37th out of 1165 finishers overall (top 3.2%)
6th out of 111 in M40-49 (top 5.4%)

VERY happy with how it went. That was a tough kind of race in a unique setting. More to come at some point with a report.

FM

[AnalBumCover]

I just finished a 5K run this morning. It was the anniversary race of my first 5K race of my career. This time the course was moved to run around the local mall parking lot twice around. Not much fun, but it was an easy, fast course.

65F degrees at the gun, and warming up fast. Despite the increasing temps, my pace improved during the second lap around the mall, with a really strong finish.

Not much else to report, other than my Garmin measured the course short of a full 5K, at 4.95K.

Official results:
Time: 42:38
Pace: 13:43/min
Overall Place: 303/444
Age Group: 17/23 (M 40-44)

[Ben E Lou]

For what it is worth, running 13.1 miles on a day I was going to need to walk around a major airport like CLT is not the BEST decision I have ever made...

[AlexB]

Did my first 100 ride today. Admittedly it was km rather than miles, but I'm claiming it!

[Kodos]

Running with purpose: Erica Hill joins the fight against cystic fibrosis - allDAY - TODAY.com

Inspiring story about Liz Shuman, a woman with cystic fibrosis who is using running as part of her fight to help find a cure for the disease. She lives a town over from me in Madison, CT. Pretty inspiring story. There's a group called OutRUN the Odds on Facebook if any of you guys want to join up.

[AlexB]

Hehe. Uploaded my Garmin running data onto Strava and was amazed to see that it reckoned my best estimated mile was 5:14

When I was at school I ran either a 4:50 or a 5:10 (I can never remember which, know it was 10 seconds off 5 minutes though!) but that was a looooong time ago and I'm nowhere near that now, and never will be again.

Clicked on the link to this time, and then found it was one of the long downhill sections on a regular run back home. Was slightly disappointed tbh

[Alan T]

Cross posting from facebook:

June running data:
Miles: 144.98 (+16.55)
Time: 24:22:20 (+3:57:12)
Ascending: 3,452 feet (+570 ft)
Avg Pace: 10:05 (slowest since October)
Calories burned: 17,370

This was the third most miles run in a month for me, trailing only January and last August.
This was also the third straight month that I have increased my miles run.
This was however my slowest average pace for a month since last October. I attribute that to the drastic increase in heat and humidity this month combined with the added miles, I ended up having to notch down plenty of runs and work on building my base up.
On the positive however, this was still 55 seconds a mile faster than this time last year!

For July, my training plan has me looking at 185 miles, which will be my most ever in a month. It will be quite challenging as I have multiple trips out of town plus the summer is just starting to get warmed up. Hopefully I will be up to the task.


Edit: Running the Peachtree Road Race (10k) on July 4th in Atlanta. My start time is 9:05am, and it is going to be roughly 80F with 80% humidity at that time. Pretty similar to what I've been running in here the past few weeks, but definitely not something for me to run a PR in. My main interest likely will be to see at what point in the race Meb passes me. Maybe I should try to see how long I can keep up with him until I pass out and have to be carted off in an ambulance?

[Kodos]

You're awesome, Alan. Very inspiring!

[Icy]

With yesterday's 12Km for first time since October 2013, June ended being a record month for me too and big jump over previous one.

Distance: 93.6 km (previous was 88.4 August 2013)
Duration: 9:56:27 (previous was 9:26:58 August 2013)
Calories Burned 9,400 (previous was 8730 August 2013)
Average Pace: 6:18 (Record still 6:02 November 2013)
Activities:14 (previous was 13 August 2013)

Basically I'm almost in same shape that i was at the end of past summer, that is not bad knowing i stopped running from Dec to March and that I still have the whole summer to keep improving.

Hope won't stop next winter so i don't have to start all over again.

[FrogMan]

Awesome numbers Alan, as Kodos said, you are an inspiration. Icy, it's also good to see you back into it, very well done!

For me, the month of June was a good bounce back month, following the low mileage month that was May, you know with the faceplant and almost a week off running (was only three days but still, felt like a week ). Following your format:

Miles: 140.98 (second most to April 2014, 142.62)
Time: 20:24:09 (most ever)
Ascending: 680m (2231 feet but I did a solid treadmill session with work at 15%)
Avg Pace: 8:41
Calories burned: 14,521 C (most ever)

After sorta going with HR based training for my easy runs, really slowing down my long runs, and introducing recovery runs on Mondays, my avg pace has really slowed down overall but my hard pace and how I can hit interval repeats with lower heart rates have both improved so I couldn't care less about an avarage pace over a month's worth of runs. It simply means very little overall, at least for now, until my whole view of what an average pace can be changes...

Take for example how this morning I ran some 400m intervals @ 5K pace (about 6:26/mile, that'd give me a 5K in 20 minutes) and over 6 repeats with 300m easy jog for rest in between, I averaged a pace of 6:10 with an average heart rate at about 140. I could almost feel that I was able to relax during some of those repeats while just a month or two ago, they were a piece of work and I would often look at my watch to see the distance left tick down.

FM

[FrogMan]

oh and Alan, that month of July looks rough for you, 185 miles!?!

I also am looking at my highest mileage month ever but I should "only" top at 160 miles

FM

[AlexB]

Originally Posted by Alan T

Cross posting from facebook:

June running data:
Miles: 144.98 (+16.55)
Time: 24:22:20 (+3:57:12)
Ascending: 3,452 feet (+570 ft)
Avg Pace: 10:05 (slowest since October)
Calories burned: 17,370

This was the third most miles run in a month for me, trailing only January and last August.
This was also the third straight month that I have increased my miles run.
This was however my slowest average pace for a month since last October. I attribute that to the drastic increase in heat and humidity this month combined with the added miles, I ended up having to notch down plenty of runs and work on building my base up.
On the positive however, this was still 55 seconds a mile faster than this time last year!

For July, my training plan has me looking at 185 miles, which will be my most ever in a month. It will be quite challenging as I have multiple trips out of town plus the summer is just starting to get warmed up. Hopefully I will be up to the task.


Edit: Running the Peachtree Road Race (10k) on July 4th in Atlanta. My start time is 9:05am, and it is going to be roughly 80F with 80% humidity at that time. Pretty similar to what I've been running in here the past few weeks, but definitely not something for me to run a PR in. My main interest likely will be to see at what point in the race Meb passes me. Maybe I should try to see how long I can keep up with him until I pass out and have to be carted off in an ambulance?

Wow, that's 3.3% of the month running not sure whether that's impressive or crazy! We'll go with impressive

[Kodos]

(Crazy.)

[Alan T]

I may be crazy, but just for the record Subby beats me pretty consistently every week by about 2-3 hours on average (biking for him though). Other than last week which he didn't do as much.

My guess is he is over 34 hours for last month

[Fidatelo]

You guys are awesome. I have no idea how you find the time and energy to put in those miles but that is fantastic. Good job!

[FrogMan]

Originally Posted by Alan T

I may be crazy, but just for the record Subby beats me pretty consistently every week by about 2-3 hours on average (biking for him though). Other than last week which he didn't do as much.

My guess is he is over 34 hours for last month

yeah, commuting by bike to work really has him put a lot of time on. Great job on his part, and he's staying injury free for now too!

FM

[FrogMan]

Originally Posted by Fidatelo

You guys are awesome. I have no idea how you find the time and energy to put in those miles but that is fantastic. Good job!

Thanks, I often say that I don't find time, I make time. Wake up at 5, run from 5:30 (or even 5:20) to 6:15 or so 4 mornings a week, then Saturday and Sunday. If I don't run before work, I won't find time later on. Take some time to get used to it but it works now.

FM

[AlexB]

Shameless bragging now, and about having the 484th best time on Strava up a hill no less

This was the hill I set myself as the target a couple of years ago: only 0.5 mile, but an average of 13% and at point it gets over 20%. Tried it twice, had to stop each time before I got to the top. Then snapped my ankle playing football. Tried again twice more after more than a year break rehabbing - again had to stop before the top...

Fifth attempt was the charm! All the way up in one go, and happier about it than pretty much anything I've done on the bike, even though it's nearly twice as slow as the quickest time!



Beer time!

[Alan T]

Looking at your ride, I'm not sure which one is "the hill" but there looked like a few pretty steep climbs on that ride!

[AlexB]

It was the big one pretty much exactly half way through. To be fair I've built it up to be the Ventoux or Mur de Huy in my mind!

[FrogMan]

ran my first ever timed 5K race today. All signs indicated that a sub-20 minutes time was possible and that's what I set as my goal aftre running a 2.5 km stretch in 9:57 earlier this week. Well, I crushed that goal with a unofficial finish time in 19:28!!!

No need to say I'm ecstatic with that time, VERY happy!



FM

[Fidatelo]

Originally Posted by FrogMan

ran my first ever timed 5K race today. All signs indicated that a sub-20 minutes time was possible and that's what I set as my goal aftre running a 2.5 km stretch in 9:57 earlier this week. Well, I crushed that goal with a unofficial finish time in 19:28!!!

No need to say I'm ecstatic with that time, VERY happy!



FM

Wow great work!!

[hoopsguy]

Not a bad debut 5k ...

[AlexB]

Originally Posted by FrogMan

ran my first ever timed 5K race today. All signs indicated that a sub-20 minutes time was possible and that's what I set as my goal aftre running a 2.5 km stretch in 9:57 earlier this week. Well, I crushed that goal with a unofficial finish time in 19:28!!!

No need to say I'm ecstatic with that time, VERY happy!



FM

Very impressive! Nice work!

[HerRealName]

FM and Alan both had great races this weekend. Hard work paid off this weekend.

I wanted to find a race for yesterday or today but the local events were gimmicky, color type runs.

[Icy]

Originally Posted by FrogMan

ran my first ever timed 5K race today. All signs indicated that a sub-20 minutes time was possible and that's what I set as my goal aftre running a 2.5 km stretch in 9:57 earlier this week. Well, I crushed that goal with a unofficial finish time in 19:28!!!

No need to say I'm ecstatic with that time, VERY happy!



FM

Wow awesome!

[FrogMan]

thanks guys, official timing and placement came to 19:26.1, 30th overall out of 369 finishers (top 8.1%), 25th out of 136 in men (top 18.4%) and 4th out of 36 in M40-49 (top 11.1%).

The overall winner finished in 14:58.1
The M40-49 winner finished in 18:14.1

8 runners in M40-49 finished in under 20 minutes so 4 within 26 seconds behind me and one that was only 1.3 seconds behind me. That final push of mine was golden!

FM

[Alan T]

Great job FM. The more you run, the more incredible your results become!

For me, I ran the Peachtree Road Race in Atlanta on Friday. It is the largest 10k I think in the world, or at least the U.S. with 60,000 runners. It is also the National 10k championship with a $50,000 prize so pulls many of the elite U.S. runners to it. It was simply an experience like none other that I have had. Nothing like any of the other races that I have done. The sheer enormity of it was mind blowing, and it was just amazing to have thousands of spectators along the entire course. Many were cheering or handing out various homemade pizza, cupcakes, or others were handing out things like beer even. It was like one huge party.

For me, I started way in the back in Wave X, the next to last wave. This was due to being registered without a qualifying time so I was running it with the masses. Every wave had something like 3,000 - 5,000 people in it I would guess, and they started 5 minutes after the previous wave. My hope was to try to make it through my wave and then I was thinking the crowds might thin out some as you get further in the race, making it easier to run....

I was waaaaaay wrong.

What I actually ended up having happen was after getting through one wave of people, I would then hit the previous wave and have to weave my way through those people only to hit the next wave before that. Quite an experience that I've never had before in a race. It actually made most of the race kind of like Nascar where I was constantly looking for holes to move in to so I could pass people.

I figured with the course being alot of up and downs, plus the Atlanta heat, this wasn't going to be a PR performance for me, so I actually just focused on the experience and trying to see how many waves I could catch up to during the race as my goals. What ended up happening though was the weather ended up being surprisingly cool (only about 70 degrees) and pretty easy compared to what I have been running in lately, so was not a factor at all for me.

I found due to the numbers of people, I never really got tired, and it was quite empowering hitting "Cardiac Hill", their version of heartbreak hill, where there were hundreds of people walking up it, and I just chugged up without any real feeling of tiredness at all. That mile was my slowest mile, but I handled the hill at around a 9:30 pace and got over it without feeling any wear at all.

I ended up getting to mile 5 and realized that I was not tired at all and had plenty left in the tank, so I started running alot faster... it was about 1/2 way into that mile that I suddenly heard from behind me some shouting "Meb on your left... Meb coming..." Meb, the winner of the Boston marathon was running this race, but started in the very back with the goal of trying to pass something like 25,000 runners for charity. I happened to be running on the left side too, and looked over and saw Meb coming up really fast to me. I didn't get in his way, but then tried to move in behind him and see how long I could keep up with him. I increased my pace to somewhere around 7:00min/mile and he just left me in the dust. Probably by about 3 minutes later, I could no longer see him

I did finish mile 6 in under 8 minutes though and coasted on in to the finish feeling like I did really great. My watch decided to have issues though from mile 5 on with all kinds of bad data tracks and gave weird times when I first uploaded it. (Some of you saw that it had given me some PRs on many distances, including a 10k PR of 50 minutes). None of that was correct as the data tracks were off.

I ended up re-editing the file, and uploaded a new one tonight, and it looks like it gave me a 10k time of 52:58, which is 5 seconds slower than my 10k PR. Which I find hilarious considering my recent half marathon I ended up 3 seconds behind my PR. I totally will take it though as I was not expecting a PR anyways on a hilly course in Atlanta during the summer with 60,000 runners!

The official time from the Peachtree road race was 54:33 and I finished 8045 out of 60,000 runners.

[Subby]

Big congrats to FrogMan and Alan T! This thread continues to be inspirational.

Good to see another cyclist here, too...enjoying looking at Alex B's rides!

[hoopsguy]

Passed my total mileage from 2013 yesterday. Still not quite on target for my yearly goals, thanks to a lazy first quarter, but expect to be caught up in another month or so.

[hoopsguy]

Not sure if serious ...
Nocturnal Lands

I guess thanks to Groupon for bringing this to my attention?

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by hoopsguy

Passed my total mileage from 2013 yesterday. Still not quite on target for my yearly goals, thanks to a lazy first quarter, but expect to be caught up in another month or so.

Nice job! It should pay off this fall for you!

Originally Posted by hoopsguy

Not sure if serious ...
Nocturnal Lands

I guess thanks to Groupon for bringing this to my attention?

These type of runs (Color Run, Electric Run, Foam Run, etc) have been popping up all over in an effort to try to get money from less serious runners by making it an event. I tend to stay away from them myself since they tend to :

1) Be overly packed, not timed and mostly just people walking from place to place in the more reputable ones such as the Color Runs..

or

2) Pretty shady/scammy and not anything close to what they advertised such as the Foam runs.


Still, I guess on the good side, it does get some more people off of the couch that wouldn't otherwise get exercise of any kind

[FrogMan]

Originally Posted by Alan T

Great job FM. The more you run, the more incredible your results become!

thanks Alan, I have said it before, I am a bit amazed at what my body can do. Incredible is the word I guess. Training seemed to point that way but as I said in my dynasty, my mind needed convincing...

And kudos to you too on your 10K. Man, 60,000 runners, that must have been crazy, and then to get passed by Meb, woah. Must have been quite an experience...

thanks everyone for the kind words, full race report with pictures is available in my dynasty thread, link in my signature...

FM

[FrogMan]

Originally Posted by hoopsguy

Passed my total mileage from 2013 yesterday. Still not quite on target for my yearly goals, thanks to a lazy first quarter, but expect to be caught up in another month or so.

great job!

FM

[FrogMan]

Originally Posted by Alan T

These type of runs (Color Run, Electric Run, Foam Run, etc) have been popping up all over in an effort to try to get money from less serious runners by making it an event. I tend to stay away from them myself since they tend to :

1) Be overly packed, not timed and mostly just people walking from place to place in the more reputable ones such as the Color Runs..

or

2) Pretty shady/scammy and not anything close to what they advertised such as the Foam runs.


Still, I guess on the good side, it does get some more people off of the couch that wouldn't otherwise get exercise of any kind

bit of the reasons why I don't like the specialty events myself. I said it before, I race to test myself, see how fast I can make this 43 yo body go with training. Not to see how dirty with colour I can get or how muddy I can get or if I can get away from prison guards...

Incidentally, Runner's World is reporting about one of those mud races going bankrupt:
Hard Charge Mud Race Series Goes Out of Business | Runner's World & Running Times

Hard Charge Mud Race Series Goes Out of Business
Series says it won't offer refunds for already existing registrations.
By Scott Douglas
Published
July 7, 2014
Hard Charge, a mud run series that launched last year, has ceased operations and won't offer refunds to runners who registered for planned summer and fall events.

The series' website now consists of a placeholder page with a message about the series' demise.

"All current and future events are cancelled," the notice reads. "Due to our financial situation Hard Charge is unable to provide refunds to any athlete who has registered for an event. Our senior secured lender has a legal right to the vast majority of our remaining assets."

An update posted on July 3, after the initial announcement, says that Hard Charge is "working to arrange a comparable race transfer for paid registrants."

The Hard Charge announcement comes less than a month after another themed race series, the Electric Foam 5K, went out of business. Although the non-traditional race segment, including obstacle course racing, mud runs and events with other themes, continued to grow rapidly in 2013, it appears some shakeout is occurring in what might be an oversaturated market.

Hard Charge held its first event in Park City, Kansas in April 2013. Its races were between 4 and 6 miles long and, according to Hard Charge marketing, were "filled with challenging obstacles, unpredictable terrain - and, of course, lots of mud."

Some of its events were apparently well-attended. According to Valley News Live, close to 2,000 people were at the June 14 Hard Charge event in Fargo, North Dakota.

Among Hard Charge races that are canceled are events in Chicago on July 14; Des Moines, Iowa on August 2; and Peoria, Illinois on September 20.

FM

[HerRealName]

This foam run looks like a blast!



My wife and daughter did a 5k Color Run a few weeks back and it was a very well organized event. They had a great time but I wouldn't want to run through those color sprays and breathe in that junk. My 5 year old refuses to get anywhere near the jogging stroller now so that gave me a good excuse to cheer them on instead.

[Kodos]

Geez, Alan! 139 kms for July on July 13th?

[FrogMan]

yeah, when I saw I had received the 80 km badge for July on Strava and saw right below he had just received the 120 km badge, I almost felt disappointed with my numbers

FWIW, I'm at 102 km for July because 6.8 or so didn't count on the Strava challenge, having been done on the tredmill. In line for my best month ever...

FM

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by Kodos

Geez, Alan! 139 kms for July on July 13th?

So far, still feeling pretty good as far as wear and tear goes on the legs. Keeping the recovery runs at a slower pace seems to be doing the trick for me.

To be honest, I'm struggling far more from heat and direct sunlight than the miles right now. Even getting up at 5am to run, still having to deal with 80+ degrees by the end of the runs with 90+% humidity is draining me a bit. The days that I have no choice but to run at noon are pretty brutal.

I'm leaving in about 10 days on a vacation in the southern hemisphere though where it is winter time, so hopefully that will make things nicer for a bit. However I am sure it will be a shock when I return home