Couch2Boston

Spoiler: Not mine :-) Mark Rice's Heart Rate Training Thoughts Way back in the fall of 2013 I was in Philadelphia getting ready for the marathon and obsessively checking the Runner's World message boards following the chatter of the cool people in the Boston Marathon section when I just couldn't take it anymore.  I had to come out of the shadows.  These people seemed nice.  Not just "internet nice" but genuinely nice and supportive.  It was time for me to create an account and have my voice heard.  Eek. I had followed their training and daily training comments for a few months after I found my way to the forum chasing links about BQ cutoff predictions.  These folks seemed like rock stars to me.  I had never been to the Boston Marathon once, but they had been there many times.  Who was I to think I had something to tell them?!?!?!? I held my fear at bay and jumped into the conversation.  I don't remember the exact trigger, but I do remember it...

I've owned the couch2boston.com domain name since right after running my first Boston Marathon way back in April 2014 .  I'd thought about starting a run blog throughout the adventures of 2012 and 2013 but always came to the same conclusion, that I could do the things or I could write about the things but I probably couldn't do the things and write about them at the same time.  This year I resolved to write about training at least once a month.  The resolution stuck pretty well for a while, but the last 3 months put me right back to the beginning, I could do the things or write about them but not both. I'm now on the precipice of Chicago2Boston .  The hay is in the barn.  Taper has started. 😱  I'm scared, for real.  I'm losing motivation fast.  I'm looking for excuses not to run.  I don't know what the heck I was thinking when I put together a training plan for Chicago2Boston that was built around running twice a week.  WTF.  I'm a...

The evidence.  Shhh. About Time It feels like only yesterday, or maybe more like this morning, that I was writing a recap of April and then  May .  I guess that's what happens when life gets in the way and I wait until 6 days into my vacation from work to get around to updating the blog (and my training log) for the last 3 months.  Oops.  Tomorrow?  That's when I file away all of the tax documents that have been sitting on my floor since we filed months ago.  After that, I'll hide the evidence from the stress eating I've been doing during very intense days at work.  Now, back to our originally scheduled programming... What Happened? June vs May  😢 Amount of time training is up 25% (8:51 to 11:06 per week) Training volume is still way too low, but at least it is heading in the right direction Average weekly run mileage has regressed from 16 to 20 miles 🚨 I doubled the number of 10 mile runs to 4 The glute/hip is starting to come around Body...

  TL;DR I'm much happier than I look here.  lol. That's me trying to smile through the coordination needed to selfie us in public while standing. Note the publish date, better late than never? The beginning of the end Chicago2Boston "Training Plan" What Happened? May vs April 😢 Can we just skip this part and move on? Amount of time training is down 22% (11:22 to 8:51 per week) Training volume is about half of what it should be by now. Average weekly run mileage has regressed from 28 to 16 miles 🚨 I'm still struggling to get my longer runs up, but did make it to 10 miles twice, just like April Body Weight?  Who knows. Let's start off with happier things... The Good News The month of May felt like we emerged from a cocoon at the same time as our other butterfly friends, both new and old.  It was wonderful to break out of the bubble and connect with real live people.  The internet is awesome and all, but there really is nothing better than being able to conne...

 TL;DR I give you, my faithful underappreciated reader(s?) a rabbit.  Enjoy. Note the publish date, better late than never? What training log? Got shot (twice) Registered for Boston Marathon 2020 fall edition Still a cranky ass, um I mean glute Be humble, stay healthy continues What Happened? April vs March Amount of time training is down 7.5% (12:17 to 11:22 per week) Includes run, bike, weights and yoga Average weekly run mileage has regressed from 29 to 28 miles I'm still struggling to get my longer runs up, but did make it to 10 miles twice Body Weight is down from 230 pounds to 225 pounds What month is it? This month feels like it had 91 days, and it kinda did.  After the change last month where I took on more responsibility at work, I feel like I've been doing sprints every day while sitting at my desk.  Despite the extra effort, I managed to hold my own and got a lower but similar training volume in during April than I did in March.  However, in the proce...

TL;DR Body still healing, feels better Training more Running longer Optimism stole my credit card Heavy lifting is starting to suffer Day job Warning: Too many puns contained within What Happened? It is hard to believe that another month has gone by already!  It has been a bumpy 31 days, but a good 31 days. At the end of February, I rediscovered that when my glute starts to complain that some easy pedaling on the bike makes it feel better.  I rode that knowledge into a productive March.  Ha!  Rode!  Get it?  Yeah, I'm sorry, please don't give up and stop reading.  No more bad puns. I managed to ride twice in February but have gotten on the bike 18 times in March.  The rides are typically limited to 30 minutes on a dumb trainer (no Zwift) and at an effort just hard enough to work up a sweat.  I'd like to think that I'm getting some more endurance by adding these rides after runs, and I probably am, but the biggest consequence is that they make...

I used to love a wonderfully simple, but powerful pace calculator over on coolrunning.com before active.com killed the site off.  What was brilliant about this calculator is that it didn't try to only do one thing.  It isn't really a pace calculator so much as a "give me 2 things and I'll figure out the 3rd" calculator.   That feature combined together with an easy way to shift between units, like miles for the distance but kilometers for the pace, and lot's of different units to select from made it very cool.  Where else have you seen the ability to take a 400 meter track time, enter it under pace and find out how long it would take to run 1 mile?  It even helps turn pool swims into open water distances! Marathon Pace If you want to know what pace a 3 hour marathon is, select Marathon from Pick Event, put 3 in the hours box before Time and select "Pace?", answer is 6:51.91 per mile. Oh, you wanted to know the per KM? Then select Per Kilometer and cl...

patience, Patience, PATIENCE, PATIENCE!!! February was interesting, more than anything it has created a renewed focus on trying to grow my patience. What hurts? My butt, err I mean glute and my elbows.   The elbows continue to improve and have been helped a lot from PT exercises suggested by a friend and now also a Theraband Intermediate Flexbar that was suggested by a coworker that has a lot more experience than I do. To find out about my backside, keep reading or run away now :-) Squats In January, I played around with changing how I squat weights.  Instead of increasing the weights, I kept 185 on the bar for every set and worked at getting my depth as low as possible for me.  The experiment, plus a natural inclination to stand up lopsided led to a sore left glute, a literal, pain in the ass.  By the end of the month, I also started to have some mild kneecap pain.  The knee was no big thing, but it was new so when February starte...

I'll get it out of the way right now, I kinda like the treadmill.  It's a useful tool.  It isn't the same as running outside and depending on perspective that is what makes it useful or a horrible abomination. The 1% Rule Just about every article online that compares running on a treadmill to running outside has to then layout the same old, tired position that in order for treadmill and outside to "be the same" you need to set the treadmill incline at 1%.  Seriously, did the authors of the gazillion articles in the last 25 years ever read the original study?   Almost every fitness article that asserts we should all run with a 1% incline misses the main points of the 1996 study that is the source of the 1% rule. Point #1 - The scope of the study was to compare the "energetic cost" of treadmill vs outside running. What does "energetic cost" mean?  They used gas analyzers, similar to a lab VO2Max test to discern how much oxygen was being used to...

Yoga is part 2 in a 2 step program to try and be a better human .  Part 1 was lifting heavy sh!t and was detailed a couple of months ago .  I've been pretty committed to the swim/bike/run stuff over the years, but the, um, uniqueness of 2020 and 2021 has presented the opportunity to embrace those things that we all know we should do but often never get around to. Yoga is something that my wife Amanda has done forever.  As a matter of fact, way back in 2012 when I got up off the couch and started running?  Amanda had months earlier started getting out of bed early to do yoga.  She was the first one in our family to commit to improving her health with exercise.  At the time she tried to get me to join her and I resisted.  I'd rather stay in bed than get up early to exercise or whatever yoga was.  Amanda repeatedly asked very nicely over the months, but I was intransigent.  I appreciated what she was doing for herself, and I appreciated what sh...