Bad News

Don't think I'll be participating in the death race this coming year. I feel silly for having entered, especially since I won't get any of the money back and one of the reasons I won't race is because of money. 1. Money, I've been putting off some line of credit debt that I need to pay off. If I keep entering races it just doesn't get done, and next year I want to do Ironman and give KQ another go. 2. The hotels are all booked in Grand Cache. I was going to stay in Hinton, but that's 150km away. At first I thought this wouldn't be a big deal, but honestly thinking about finishing at 3-5am and getting out to the hotel after hopefully finding Lisa. 3. I'm still burnt out from cda training and this year was supposed to be a year of recharging so I can do Ironman in 2012. 4. At first it didn't seem like it would take that much training, but after really looking at it, some of my days would be longer than my longest IM training days. Not really fair to Lisa. 5. Don't really have a support crew figured out, and I don't want to ask a friend to do that. It's just too much time, and money committment for them. I think there's probably more reasons, I just thought I should tell my readers.

So this year as of now(I say that because my plans seem to change often) I plan to train hard for the marathon. Do my best, hopefully qualify for Boston(although I doubt I'll actually go do it). Then start my prep(swimming/riding) for Ironman next year. I will start off really slowly so that I can have a good summer involving lots of camping hopefully. That is all,

DP

brrrrrrrrrrr

Hey,

I had a good outdoor run yesterday. I had a 10 miler to do and it was -12, -20 with windchill which I didn't see till later. I might not have run outside if I had seen that. But it had been awhile since I'd run outdoors so I was eager to do so. I can't loose the outdoor feel. So I headed outside towards carburn park and the river. The path there is mostly scraped so I'd have less problems with snow/ice. I alternated running around the pond, then running out to glenmore trail and back(Curtis the same type of thing we did last winter for those Chuckie tempos). On the third loop/outanback I just had to go a bit further out to make it the 10 miles. The pace was pretty good, I didn't go hard or anything, but the pace wasn't exactly easy, I guess moderate. I tried slowing down at times, but I right away sped up again like I was on cruise control. Felt really good, the average was only about 18 secs per mile slower than my goal marathon pace. So things seem to be going well. I doubt I would have been able to do 26.2 miles at that pace yesterday, but I have time yet. Progress is the name of the game. Tomorrow is the long run, 20 miles on the schedule. I wonder if I should attempt to do it outdoors, or just hit up the treadmill. 57 runs in a row now(58 if counting Dec 31st) Cheers,

DP

Quick update

The running is going really well. I've slowly built up into Pfitzinger's marathon plan and aside from the fact that he has monday as a offday of running I'm following it almost exclusvively. I just run like 25 min on that day and then take a mile off of three days of running and I'm set. I'm up near 60 miles a week, this week I should probably be just over. The long run is just over 17 miles. Not too much speed work yet as it's a endurance cycle that I'm in now which basically means it builds up the mileage. Once the mileage is up then more speed work gets added. For now I do one day a week of either accelerations, or a short tempo. This week I did 4 miles yesterday at 15-20k race pace in the middle of a 8 miler. That's pretty much it for now. Oh yeah, I'm over the hump 50 some days in a row now and still going. I have an average of 6.4 miles per day. Not sure if I'll keep going, as I get up over 60 miles a week I really need the recovery more and more and a day off would help more than even a really easy short one. Dunno yet what I'll do, for now I'm just monitoring how I feel, so far all systems check, no aches or pains at all.

DP

Back to the tready

So it's back to the treadmill for me. Tuesday I had some fast stuff to do and since I didn't really fall on my ass, I went to the gym to do it. I'm working my way into the pfitzinger schedule I posted awhile ago. It's a touch more mileage, and since I started a bit late I'm working my way into it, still trimming a bit of miles. He had 9 miles with 10xstrides. That didn't seem too bad and it turned out fun cause the strides really breaks up a run and the time seems to fly by. I cut it down to a hour run which gave me like 7.6 miles. For each stride I'd slowly crank it up to 10.5 mph for a count of ten, then slowly bring it down to my regular 7.5 mph. It was perfect, Chuckie had me doing a bunch of these last year. He called them analactic sprints I think? His theory was that they worked on your form, stride, but were too short to really create any lactic acid in the muscles. So they could be done on a easy/recovery type of run. Yesterday I did a med. length run on the tready. 1.5 hours or 11.5 miles. Did the first hour at 7.5 mph and the last 30 min at 7.8mph. Felt ok, not too hard.

DP

night vision

Hey all,

Had a great run with Curtis last night. We did our res. loop the long route. The back side was tough though, since we got that huge dump of snow on monday the running room grp has not been through the trail yet. So it was really rough single track(if you could call it that) which meant we were sliding back and forth off the path(again, IF you could call it that) it was dark but it may just have been a cross country ski path. Either way it was hard on the core, hips, ankles, etc. Towards the end nearing the paved part again(the crazy snowy part was maybe 5k?) I ran under a tree and happened to look up and there was a great grey owl. I've seen lots of owls especially around where I live, but this guy was like only 6 feet above us!! I couldn't believe he didn't fly away. Even when Curtis stopped under the tree he didn't lift off. He just sat there looking around. They are so earily quiet, it's unbelievable. Have you ever heard a owl fly over your head? Probably not because they make no sound, absolutely none!! They are the most incredible hunter. Anyways we stood there a bit, it was dark, but we were so close we could see him occasionally look down straight into our eyes. He seemed to look right through us. I guess with that night time vision and from that distance it's possible. That definatly made up for the crappy footing. I've never been so close to one of them. Amazing. Anyways we finished up our run and headed into the star bucks for a much deserved Venti coffee. :) The highlight of the run, well second highlight of the run. Later,

DP

37 days and counting

Hey,

I had a crappy/good weekend of running. Crappy because on saturday morning when it was time to get up for the long run, I just couldn't. My stomach was bugging me a bit, but more than that I just had no motivation at all. So I bailed on Curtis, sorry buddy. :( I still got in a 5 mile run that night, it actually felt really good. I just am not a morning workout person. No matter how much I try, I can do it, but I can never get to the point where I actually enjoy getting up for it. Give me a evening anyday, it doesn't matter how late it is. I can do workouts till 2am if I need to. Anyways, I felt good sunday too so I decided to do a solid tempo run. I'm still over weight, but despite that I'm feeling pretty quick. I did a mile warmup then went right into a 5 mile tempo @ 9 mph or 6:40 pace per mile. It was tough, but got through it no problem. I did one more mile cool down for a 7 mile run. That makes it 37 days run this year. overandout,

DP

Pictures

Hey,

I finally put some pictures up from our trip to LL for the ice sculpting.

https://picasaweb.google.com/Darryl.Penner/LLIceCarvingFestival#

More hills and more treadmill

Hey,

Had a pretty good run yesterday on the treadmill. I could really have run outside, but I really wanted to do some steep hills and there is no better place to get the precise grade and length of hill like the treadmill. Another plus is you don't have to run down inbetween, you can keep going up and up and up as long as you want, crazy phenom eh? lol

My workout:

15 min Warmup

3 x 5min Walk @ 15% grade 3.5 mph, the last 4mph
Active rest between sets 5 min @ 0% grade, 7.5 mph
Just over 4 miles in 42 min

Simple as that, wasn't really that hard of a work out(the last one at 4mph was hard though) and short. I really need to be careful how hard I work my calves. They pull really easy so I'm thinking I need to gradually get them used to the steep uphills. That is why I did the shorter workout and not too intense. That and I didn't have much more time than that. Don't worry, when I'm ready I'll be doing some epic hilly training runs. Right now it's baby steps. The way I look at it is I have to train now, to prepare myself for the hard training later. My current training will prevent injuries and burnout later. Running challenge going well, feeling good after 32 days(well 33 technically) running.