Overweight and Slow, but Still Training for Chicago

Man, I Hate Running

enochfreeman — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 00:16:50 +0000

So today was the 20 miler. The first one! After barely finishing, I soaked in some ice water and took a nap. I’m up, but I still don’t feel like doing much. So basically the run took up the whole day.

My feet hurt. My legs hurt. And I just spent ten minutes filing down two malformed toenails with a rotary trimmer made for dog claws.

In addition, I’ve lately been losing circulation in my toes at around the 4-6 mile mark. I think I may need to go up a size in shoes (which means my feet have grown a whole size in the past year). There’s a hundred bucks. Wouldn’t be so bad if I hadn’t just bought a pair about a month ago.

I sort of remember this from last year. It’s kind of fuzzy, but I’m pretty sure I stopped running altogether except for the long training runs on the weekends.

So sitting here feeling all jaded, I remember our awesome fundraiser at Global Fayre on Friday night. Chris ran a marathon on a treaadmill out in front of the store and $1 from every purchase for the day went to World Vision. We had 9 children get sponsored and brought a lot of publicity to the store. And then afterward, Chris had to go and tell us all how proud he was of us and how we’re making such a huge difference in Africa.

I wanted to slap him. As soon as I decided that all this wasn’t worth it, Chris has to get all passionate and motivate me to keep going. I guess that’s why I’m on a team and not trying to do this on my own.

So I suppose I’ll keep training, try to lose a little weight, and see how the marathon goes. I only hope I can manage to raise some more funds. I’ve only got 140 bucks in so far. Please help me out. Hop over to my fund raising page and make a contribution. Time is running out!

Distance: 20 mi.
Time: 3:50
Pace: 11:30/mi.

The Reason I Do this Stuff

enochfreeman — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 18:54:12 +0000

Believe it or not, I’m really not so narcissistic as to believe that people have much if any interest in reading about my workouts. What I’m really about is changing lives in Zambia. The idea behind the blog was just to let people know what I’m putting into this (over 150 miles so far this season!), and hopefully to encourage you to join me in supporting World Vision.

If I could get 200 people to just give just $5 each, we could raise $1000 to change lives in Africa.

It’s very easy to support me online – visit: http://www.firstgiving.com/enoch to make a donation.

It takes a matter of minutes, is totally secure and you can even leave a message with your donation.

Thanks, and I’ll be back to my boring running blogs soon.

I Did It! … finally, sheesh …

enochfreeman — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 02:32:50 +0000

I don’t know why it freaks me out so much, but the thought of running the 8.5 miles to work just seems insurmountable. Or it seemed like it until today.

(short pause while I pat myself on the back)

Anyway, I’m not too high on my horse because I was scheduled to run 10 today, but it still felt great, freeing actually, to finally make the run. It was my fifth opportunity according to the training schedule. Of course, the thunderstorms this afternoon kind of made me wonder if I would be riding my bike home in the rain, but it all worked out.

17 miles on Saturday. 8.5 today. And it seems like the quality and mental focus are getting better. Maybe I’m getting over the difficulty of it all, or maybe I’m just starting to really believe in what I’m doing.

Distance: 8.54 mi.
Time: 1:23:19
Pace: 9:46/mi
Max HR: 166

Boredom

enochfreeman — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 14:07:44 +0000

Life really is boring. Actually, we set up hedges around ourselves to make daily living as uneventful as possible. Right? We prefer things to go smooth and easy. We don’t want a really interesting drive to work. We don’t tend want to live out a drama. It seems like we all want life to be the flavor of a water chestnut.

Isaiah 40:31 “But those who trust in the Lord will find new strength. They will soar high on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not faint.”

It’s a familiar scripture, but it is taking on new meaning for me lately. The spiritual high of soaring like an eagle is great, but that’s not really how life works most of the time. We spend much more time running, and much more still walking. The boring stuff.

I suppose it doesn’t help that I work in a gray fabric box for 40 hours a week. But I am quite simply bored to death. And I’ve never been very good at the day-to-day life in general. I’m much better at the fun stuff.

This kind of discontent seems to be happening more often as I get older. But I’m only 30! What’s it going to be like when I’m 40? I can’t imagine. But it’s not like there’s another option. So I guess I’ll do what I always do. Go through the motions and wait on God to breathe some sense of purpose back into my life.

Faster than a Speeding Enoch

enochfreeman — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 17:20:33 +0000

As I rounded the corner for the finish line, I mustered every ounce of energy I had and took off at an all out sprint. I blew past the last water stop and came to another corner. And then another corner. And another… HOLY COW! Where’s the finish line!

By the time I came to the hill that led to the “actual” finish line, I was ready to pass out. I had done my sprint to the finish about a mile too soon. How cliche.

Anyway, the Y Not Run race was a good time this weekend. I did manage to set a new personal record for my 10k, 57:11. Hey! Stop laughing! That’s pretty good for me!

Distance: 10k
Time: 57:11
Pace: 9:13/mi
Weekly Mileage Total: 26 mi

Oh, and I have pictures:

Me Appearing Energetic for the Finish

The Team

Chris Miller, Team Captain, won 1st for his age group!

Oh Em Jee. Even Slower and Heavier

enochfreeman — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 17:15:30 +0000

Maybe I don’t get this whole training thing. It was my understanding that as you train, you will get better at running. You’ll lose weight. Your apetite will increase. I am apparently opposite man. My appetite has decreased. I’m getting slower. And I’m gaining weight. At least two people have commented, “Well, maybe it’s muscle weight.” That is actually a small comfort when I still have this donut bouncing around my waist. Now I have even more of me to propel as I run. Chris mentioned that the same was true for him for years but that he recently dropped a bunch of weight. So if I keep this up for one more year, maybe I’ll see some more results! 11:40 average. At least if I can keep that up for the marathon, I’ll knock off half an hour from my time last year. I was really hoping for more.

Distance: 15.1 mi (35.3 total for the week)
Total Time 2:56:10
Pace: 11:40/mi
Max Heart Rate: 154

The Training Blog

Effed up Friday

enochfreeman — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 14:53:06 +0000

Half a mile into my run this morning (keep in mind it was 6:30 a.m.), I came across a drunk man who shouted “OURA!” (I’m assuming that bit was to get my attention) “F!@#ed up Friday!” I acknowledged him with a quick “Guess so,” and kept – on – running. It occurred to me that he was within stumbling distance to my house and the front door was wide open, but -eh- he was on Kearney, so not likely.

I tried to time out my run, which should have worked and has in the past, but apparently I was running r e a l l y s l o w l y this morning. Holy cow. Funny thing about running first thing in the morning, warming up seems to be essential. Things aren’t working correctly. I must make a mental note of that next time I attempt a long run in the morning. Oh wait, that’s tomorrow.

Distance: 7.56 mi
Pace: 10:24/mi
Max Heart Rate: 156

Lactating in Tempo

enochfreeman — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 20:22:52 +0000

So according to my training plan, a tempo run should be 88-92% of your max heart rate or 30 seconds per mile slower than your 5k race pace. So apparently I suck. That would put my 5k race pace at 8:17. I guarantee that isn’t going to happen. As far as max heart rate, my max was 163, but I lingered around 150. According to formulas, my max should be closer to 190, so my tempo runs should be at 170ish. Holy freakin crap. Maybe this wouldn’t be so hard if I weighed 20 lbs less.

Anyway, they say these are to increase my “lactic threshold,” whatever that means. I feel like if I push myself any further, I may actually start lactating. Either that or my nipples will start bleeding. However, I am glad to report that I have successfully completed my first tempo run (sort of). I did run for 40 minutes, but I had a couple of breaks. Maybe if I had done my 30-minute and 35-minute runs, this wouldn’t have been so excruciating.

Distance: 4.56 mi
Time: 40:00
Average: 8:47/mi
HR Max: 163

The Runner Who Didn’t Run

enochfreeman — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 14:44:32 +0000

I mentioned having some kind of motivational problem to a friend, who replied, “And you’re a runner,” as in, it shouldn’t be hard for me to get my mileage in because I’m a “runner.”

I have to be honest. I don’t think I’m a runner. If I am, I’m a very bad one. I’ve made one out of three training runs so far this week. Last year, I basically only did the weekend long runs.

Quite honestly, I just need a swift kick in the butt. My goal is a 4:00 marathon, which was pretty ambitions when I set it three months ago. I’ve slacked off on training so much that I don’t know if it’s possible at this point.

I just need to remind myself why I’m doing this. If I were just running a marathon to run it, that would be one thing. The truth is that I’m running for a cause greater than myself. And that is reason enough to get up and run. Now if I can just remember that at 6 in the morning!

8 Miles in the Middle of the Night

enochfreeman — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 05:40:55 +0000

I have all but given up on running first thing in the morning. I am simply not a morning person. I hit the road at 9 o’clock and finished up at 10:30 exactly. 9:36 per mile average. And while I am quite happy with myself, here I am blogging at midnight thirty instead of sleeping. This kind of mileage is going to kill me.