Running....

Well, hunting season is over and I'm still trying to stay in shape.  My last day of active hunting was November 5th and I'm still getting out and running about 3 times a week.  I still don't think I actually would be able to say that I enjoy running, but I sure do like the results that it provides.  According to the runkeeper program I've burned over 67,000 calories this year jogging or hiking!  According to the stuff I've read, it takes 3,500 calories burned to lose a pound so if I hadn't been working out and ate the same amount of food I would be about 20 pounds heavier right now!

One thing that I'm going to start trying to do is run in some of the local running club races that they have each month.  I've run in a couple 5K races at LCU and one in Austin and one in downtown Lubbock over the last 10 or 15 years, but they were races that Cathy was running in already and she convinced me to go with her.  This was the first time I actually felt ready to run in a race and the first time I actually pressed the issue of going.  Cathy did mention it to me, but I lined up a baby sitter and decided that we were going.

It was just a 4 mile race, but it was a cross country race at Mae Simmons park and that is one place in Lubbock that actually has some hills.  Not much compared to most places, but for folks around here they are memorable.  I mentioned to a few of my co-workers that I was going to run at Mae Simmons and they groaned with memories from running it in high school.  I felt like 4 miles would be a cake walk, but they had me a little concerned about the course.

Okay, enough lead in!  We ran 4 miles and it was easy!  I ended up running it in a 9:15 pace and Cathy ran it in a 9:35 pace.  I didn't feel like I was pushing it very hard at all, I treated it as a training run and just tried to keep my pace.  It was a little different than running by myself or with Cathy as there were 125 other folks out there doing the same thing.  I ended up taking 62nd which was pretty much smack dab in the middle of the pack.  Cathy finished in 71st.

Here's a picture from runkeeper showing the route and my splits.

We did a 2 mile loop twice to get to the 4 miles.  The graph looks pretty consistent for each loop on the elevation.  It was actually a pretty decent elevation gain for around here anyway.

In retrospect I probably could have run quite a bit faster, but since it was my first race when I was actually in shape I just didn't know.  I ended up running another 6 miles yesterday and decided to push it a bit on the last mile just to see how I would do and was surprised that I was able to run the last mile in an 8:17 pace and actually broke an 8:00 pace for the last 1/4 mile or so.  That was after running 5 miles at a 9:30 pace.

Just last week I ran a nice flat 6 mile route at the house and actually beat a 9:00 pace on it. 

My splits were really close on that run with my fastest mile at 8:48 and my slowest mile at 9:04.  It was a MUCH nicer day than yesterday though.

I've been tracking all of my running and hiking with the runkeeper program and it is showing that I'm up to 388 miles for the year.  229 of that is running and 153 of that is hiking with 6 miles on the elliptical thrown in too.  I really didn't get started on running to get in shape until May and I've actually averaged 31 miles of running over the last 6 months.  I'm hoping to get in 400 total miles by the end of the year and would like to get to 250 miles of running.

I'm still very slow compared to any real runners, but I'm closing the gap.  Looking back at my first 6 mile run this year back in June I have cut my pace by over 2 minutes per mile!  I the same route in an 11:18 pace and had to walk twice.  I was beat when I was done and don't think I got anything else done the entire day.    Last week I ran it in an 8:56 pace and felt great when I was done.  That's over 14 minutes faster over the same 6 miles in just over 6 months of working out!

I'm sure I'm going to get to the point of diminishing returns pretty soon, and when it all comes down to it I'm perfectly fine being the slow big guy out there plodding along, but it is nice to see some results anyway.  I'm setting a goal to run a 1/2 marathon in 2012 so I can't quit now.

Being in shape is really nice, I guess the time spent running is worth it.

That's it for now, Nathan