Weekly Round up 02/03/12

It's super friday here in the super bowl town, which means nothing special for me. I'm still working like everyone else and my office isn't downtown. However, I do have some super plans and will be enjoying my first super bowl super sober style. I made it downtown to check out the scene earlier this week and caught a Pacer game with some good friends on Tuesday night and saw the giant roman numerals by the monument. No pictures though because I'm sure you've seen enough of them in your Facebook news stream already.

Honestly I had been in a deep funk Monday-Wednesday of this week. Not sure where it came from, but it hit me suddenly and hard. By Wednesday night I didn't know what to do. That is until I was driving home trying to convince myself to put in some sort of work out, but nothing sounded appealing. That's when it hit me like a ton of bricks. The weather is warm, the mood is right, how about some long run therapy. It sounded perfect and worked out perfectly. I had an idea that I wanted to get in at least 10 miles, no goal on time or pace, but most importantly I wanted to run in familiar places that were meaningful to me.

The places that came to mind (ones appealing for a road run anyway) were all in town so I drove to the parking lot of my gym and set out in the dark around 7:30 PM. I ran a familiar route that carried me past my grandparents house 3.6 miles into the run. I made an aid station stop, got a hug from grandma and a host of ego boosting compliments, "Josh, you look younger every time I see you. You're so cute. Are you sure you should be running in the dark, all those drivers out there going to fast?" I appeased her concerns by convincing her my running jacket is high vis when headlights shine toward me and I attached my spare hat light to the back side of my running packet. I gulped down a blackberry GU topped off my water and headed back out for the rest of my run, still having no idea of how far it would actually be. I hit up Blast Off park and Arbuckle Acres, both places I take the kids to play, and ran their paved trails. I rounded out of the park and shot across the street to split the alley between the hometown insurance agency and Dean's Rent All. As I passed town hall and the police station, 10 miles ticked off on my Garmin and my legs were aching to kick it up a gear. I hadn't been doing anything but cruising, kind of a Sunday joy ride kind of speed. I downed my last GU and finished off the remaining water in my hand held and cruised a little faster toward the high school. I kicked out 4.2 more miles at a sub 9 speed, one of the miles at 8:32.

Back to my car, done with the run, I physically felt great and mentally at peace. I felt as though I could have easily ticked off another 5-6 miles. Well, if I had any more GU and water, or places I wanted to run. I continue to surprise myself. This was a distance PR for me, 14.2 miles and only a few days after running my first half marathon. I'm contemplating crushing that PR tomorrow on some trails, but nothing for sure yet, don't want to over do it. In other running news I logged 113 miles in the month of January running on and another 20 on the row machine. My first ever 100 mile month!

I've got a couple of really cool videos to share for all you runners and readers out there. I swiped them both from Dax at Dirty Running. The first is a spin off of the wildly popular  Shit Girls Say. Everyone is making spin offs and the runner community has done it well. Dax made his own:

Shit Ultra Runners Say

I didn't really steal the videos, they are available on youtube for all. Great job Dax.

The second video is really well produced interview with ultra runner Tim Waggoner. You can get to know him and his training better at his blog Joghard. I love that blog title!. Tim is better known under his pseudonym Lucho in the online ultra running community. The interview gives a really cool perspective on the philosophy of running and training. I highly recommend the 5 minutes it takes to watch even for non runners, it's inspiring.

I wouldn't have ever seen this had Dax not posted it to his blog first, hence I swiped it from him for all of you to say. If you're a run blogger of any sort and into the trail thing, Dirty Running is great read.