Author: greg

I am a scientist and educator. I love to cook and eat too much. I enjoy wine tasting and wine making. I have a perennial and a vegetable garden. I am a runner and strive to live healthy. I blog about all these things. I do this for myself, not for anyone else so don’t bother complaining to me about my blogs.
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A run and a rant

First the run. Today was AWESOME. The temperature was in the mid 30’s and it was sunny, sunny, sunny. Perfect for me. I headed out hoping to do 10 miles but I was just feeling great so I did 12 miles in all. I was even able to maintain a good 8:40 pace even at the end of my run, so I was happy. There were a lot of runners out and about this morning. I think there was some kind of organized marathon training run as I saw lots of people on the marathon route and an aid station set up.

Now the rant. Garmin and motionbased are beginning to really piss me off. I have used motionbased.com for a couple of years to log my runs from my Garmin forerunner 305. It’s taken a long time for Macintosh compatibility to come from Garmin. Toward the end of this month motionbased will cease and everything will be migrated over to Garmin Connect. GC is a brand new logging system built from the ground up by Garmin. Although they should support all Garmin devices, none of their information pages, nor the garmin connect web site says anything about Garmin devices other than the Edge 605/705 and Forerunner 405. I’m not sure yet what will happen when I try to upload from my 305. As of today it is not possible to use Garmin Connect with the 305.

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Ramping up before ramping down

Just two and a half weeks until the marathon and I’m ramping up for a big mileage week. Since I was set back last week my final long 20 mile run will be this coming weekend. Then I’ll taper down to the marathon. So far my hip is feeling fine. I had a really great 10.76 mile run this morning at a 8:49 pace. Pretty good clip for me. It was chilly, about 42 °F, and windy (20 mph). But I felt pretty comfortable after a mile or two. I’m excited to finally run my home town marathon to its fullest. I’ve also signed up for the Manitoba marathon in June and the Twin Cities marathon in October.

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Iliacus or Psoas?

These two muscles are located in the front of the hip joint and I think I have strained one of them. Unfortunately it is at the wrong time with just four weeks left until the Fargo Marathon. I think I was a bit overzealous on Thursday running 10.5 miles at an 8:14 pace. That evening my hip was really annoying me and on Friday I could not even walk without extreme pain. Well the muscle is healing and I managed to get out for a very easy 2 miles today. I could tell I’m not 100% but it has improved a lot. I’ll take it easy this week and will probably have to push next weekend’s 20 mile run back a week. That should still give me two weeks to taper before the marathon.

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21 miles under the belt

As my marathon training is ramping up I’ve had some great weeks, mileage wise. On Sunday I ran my first 20+ miler of the year. It was a nice slow 21.4 miles at a 10:28 pace. This on the heels of a rather fast 11.3 miles at an 8:41 pace on Saturday. I’m a little concerned about my heart rate though. During my Sunday run I experienced some tachycardia. My heart rate shot up to about 180 bpm and stayed there for about 15 minutes or so. This has happened before but never in the middle of a run. A few times over the last couple years when I started my runs on a cold morning I’d have a rapid heart beat. Last year I wore a 24 hour monitor and my doctor could find nothing wrong. I may have to have it checked out more thoroughly. Last thing I need is to drop dead on the course.

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I know I’m a slacker

Ok, first of all I know I have slacked off about writing on this new blog. I promise as I get closer to the Fargo Marathon on May 17, I’ll be updating much more frequently. The other thing I have been slacking off on is getting up in the morning to run. I’ve been doing pretty well on the weekends, but I am officially SICK and TIRED of the cold weather. This weekend it will be 60 degrees warmer than it will be tomorrow morning and that only reaches the freezing point. I think I’ll try to run in the evening tonight when it’s warmer (close to zero).

That being said I have been traveling for a couple of weeks and had some good runs on the road. A couple weeks ago I was in Albuquerque and had a couple of very nice runs in the high desert. I actually saw coyotes running along the trail. And last week I got in a good workout while in Pittsburgh. The hills there were quite steep and I definitely used some muscles I’m not used to.
I will get this blog in shape soon. Just be patient with me.