dedication, perseverance, self-discipline

Kimia and I finished our little challenge for the week.  Kimia won with a total score of 10-9.

I ran 9 miles this morning in 1:09:21 (33:56 first half, 35:25 second half).  I started off the run really slowly, and I hit my 2 mile mark in about 17:00.  Just before I hit this mark I saw another guy out running and I sped up in order to catch up to him.  Just before I caught up to him he noticed that I was coming, and he sped up as well, so I didn't really slow down after catching him.  It ends up that it was one of the Iowa State runners out on a morning run.  I met him once while running last year (November maybe?), and he guessed correctly who I was, simply because he couldn't imagine anyone else running him down from behind.  I ended up running with him for about 2 miles (about 6:30-6:40 pace average) before he turned off to head back to campus.  I then slowed back down again, and finished the run on my own.

At school I helped out Liz collect some pilot data for her research, and I ended up running about 4 more miles while helping her.  I ran a short warm-up, and then ran just over a mile while forefoot striking, followed by running just over a mile while heel striking, and finished up by running just over a mile barefoot.  I also helped Liz by experimenting running "barefoot" with socks, and running barefoot without socks.  I performed all of the running trials on a treadmill, with an accelerometer attached to my right tibia.  Essentially, Liz is going to be looking at the data collected to see how randomly the timing of my footfalls is distributed about the mean, and is trying to see if there will be differences depending on footstrike pattern.

I ran a total of 9 miles this morning in 1:12:02 (36:12, first half, 35:50 second half).  I felt tired this morning, so I didn't make any effort to run fast, even when I realized that I had a good chance of catching the 8:00 guy at the end of the run I didn't really speed up much.  I think I was tired because yesterday I ran more than I am accustomed to.  It is kind of pathetic that running 4 more miles than planned wore me out as much as it did.  I probably need to keep things easy for the rest of this week.  Hopefully the max stress test I am doing in class tomorrow doesn't wear me out too much.

I only ran 7 miles this morning because I was going to run a max stress test in the afternoon.  Total time was 53:58.  I felt much better today than yesterday.

In the afternoon for the stress test I ran what I will call 2 miles.  Total time was 21 minutes, with a 5 minute cool down at the end.  Total distance was probably less than 2 miles, but I maxed out at a 22% grade going 6 mph, while the test started at a 10% grade.  My HR maxed out at 189 at the end of the test.  I guess this gives me a benchmark that I can use to gauge fitness improvements.  If I do this again in a year maybe I can hit 24 minutes instead of 21.

I got a replacement HR monitor strap yesterday, so I was able to run with the HR monitor for the first time in about a year and a half.  The results were about what I expected to see, although not what I wanted to see.  My HR was between 5-10 bpm higher at a given pace than it used to be when I was in better shape.  My best guess is that this coorelates with about a 30-40 second per mile reduction in pace compared to before.  It looked like I was hitting about 131 on the HR monitor at about 8:10 mile pace.  2 years ago, I would have been about 7:30-7:40 mile pace with a HR of 131.  Total time for the run was 1:11:48 for 9 miles.

Total score thusfar for week two of the competition that Kimia and I are having:  Kimia - 7, Jeff - 7 (I was down 7 to 4 at the beginning of the day).

Total time of 1:10:28 for 9 miles, with an average HR of 133.  So, 1:20 faster than yesterday, with an average HR that was 1 bpm slower.  That makes me think that I was still slightly fatigued yesterday after the max stress test on Wednesday.

My leg and back have still caused intermittent pain recently, though I have not made daily mention of it as I did previously.  The pain tends to radiate through the iliac crest and down into the quad/groin, or up into the low back.  I really should go to see a physical therapist soon so that I can try to get rid of the pain completely.  My hesitation however, has been that I have been mostly successful at eliminating the pain without the need to see a doctor.  I keep thinking that maybe I will figure out something new to fix things on my own, and the possibility excites me considering how close I actually am to doing just that.

Anyhow, I figure that my kids need a little more love today, so here are a few pictures.

Shayon holding Kamran.  He doesn't like doing this very often (although he loves giving the baby kisses), so we had to persuade him to hold the baby so that we could take a picture.

Anita and Shayon pretending to be Darth Vader at the Halloweed store.

Shayon decided to be an artist today.  Here he is painting his face with the face paint that was supposed to be part of his halloweed costume (a skeleton).

I ran 11 miles this morning in about 1:26:00, with an average HR of 133.  My back did not hurt much, but it felt off today.  I wonder if I need to start sleeping on the floor again.  I tried stretching out my back after I got home, but it didn't seem to help much.