Horse Fork Trail Run

A lot of my 50k50y run is going to be on the Owensboro Greenbelt. I want to cover each part of my planned route before the day of the actual run. Early this morning I ran the Horse Fork Trail section of the Greenbelt. Its a beautiful path with a long straight section that follows an old railroad track bed. The hardest part of this section is that the RR section is a steady uphill climb (about 50 feet over 2 miles), but since this is the only section of my 50k50y route where I’m going to double-back I’ll also have a long steady downhill slope to look forward to.

Today was my longest run to date at 8.35 miles. I was pleased with my average pace this morning of 9:40/mile. I also like the Greenbelt’s flat surface compared with the curved road surface of city streets. It’s much easier on my knees. I think I’m going to rework my route to include more of the Greenbelt if possible.

Running Mount Owensboro

Sunday was stormy so I didn’t run and Monday didn’t look much better. I almost let the weather deter me, glad I didn’t. I ended up running 7.5 miles! I tried out a new route, straight up Frederica Street to the river and back. I never realized how much lower downtown is compared with my end of town, but when I got to 1st Street and looked back up Frederica it looked like was going to have to run up the side of a mountain. It probably wasn’t quite that steep, but after already running about 3.75 miles it sure seemed that steep.

Sitting on your ass is tiring

I wasn’t able to run this morning because of a storm rolling through Owensboro. I thought, “no problem, I’ll run after work”.  Well a 5K after sitting on your ass all day is the hardest 5K I’ve ran.  I made it, but I’m sticking to mornings as much as I can.

You have to walk before you can run

I got a very encouraging email today from a friend. He was impressed with the progress I’ve made in running. It made me think through why, it seems all of a sudden, running is coming so easy to me. Well the fact is, it’s not really “all of a sudden”.

Last December I set out to lose 60 pounds by my daughter’s wedding at the end of May. Part of my lifestyle change was to start walking, I went from barely walking a mile on a tread mill in January to walking 5 to 7 miles a day by the time daughter got married. From there I just kept walking and walking until one day in late July I walked 15 miles in a day. It’s then that I realized there weren’t enough hours in the day to walk further and keep a full time job so if I wanted to keep increasing my workout I would have to start running. Again, at first, I would run half a mile, then walk a mile, and just kept increasing my running time day after day until one day I just didn’t stop running. It was kind of the opposite of “mind over matter”. My body was ready, but my mind wasn’t. I didn’t think I could run a mile, then I thought I’d never run a 5K, 10K was out of the question 2 weeks ago, now I’m planning a 50K walk/run. I’m no running guru, but I suspect all that walking strengthened my legs and knees so that I was ready to start running.

Maybe the old adage “You have to walk before you can run” is true.

The word is out

Okay, I’ve emailed my family, so the word is out, I can’t back-out now.  BJ has agreed to be my support vehicle as well as valet for people that want to join me for only part of the walk.  Mike has tentatively agreed to walk the full route, so we’re up to 3 people committed to doing 50k, Mike, Meagan and myself.

I’m close to a final route using a new tool Meagan sent me, MapMyRun.com.  After driving the eastern part of my original draft for a route, I’ve completely reworked the eastern leg.  I’m going out and back a long straight stretch of the Greenbelt that follows an old railroad track.  I hadn’t wanted to double-back on any of my route to keep it from being boring, but I also wanted to include as much of the Greenbelt as I can.  By making this change I’ll stay on better paths and hit a part of the Greenbelt that I couldn’t pickup otherwise.  I’ll post a link to my planned route shortly.

I had a good run this morning, matching my 9:29/mile pace for a 4 mile run.  I’ll post my Runkeeper log anytime I better my distance or pace otherwise just know I’m running every day.

Route planning has started

I found a nice site to help me map out my route. http://walkjogrun.net gives me a Google map with tools to draw and measure out my route. I’ve developed a preliminary route. I’m not ready to post it just yet, but I will once I’ve decided it’s right for me. One of the functions of this website is a calculator at the bottom that gives me information about the route such as the amount of time to walk/run it based on an average speed I provide. It also tells me how many calories I can expect to burn. The calorie count floored me. My current planned route has me burning over 4000 calories! That’s important information to know, but it never occurred to me that I would expend that much energy. This is reinforcing my need to prepare for this walk/run and not just to “take off” on October 31th. Meagan has already started gathering info on how to prepare and she assures me we can do this.

Beautiful Cool Morning

The weather was perfect this morning for me to push my run a little farther than normal. I ended up running about 1.2 miles further than my previous best and at a respectable 9.36 min/mile pace. My 50k50y is not going to be a run, it’s going to be more walk than run, but running is the best way for me to prepare. My thought is “the farther I can run, the farther I can walk”.