Starting up . . . again

I remember starting up running in the late summer for High School CC and swearing I'll never get out of shape again, it's just too hard to get back to where you were. Bet I've done it 30 times since then.

Haven't logged much for mileage for quite a while. To add insult to "injury" I was also forced to take a couple weeks off after another cortisone injection. I have taken five, two week layoffs from running in the last 14 months. During these times I have tried everything from "total rest" to using the elliptical 9 times. Neither extreme nor anywhere in between has seemed to maintain cardio like running would have. I can't believe how hard the first few runs are. This logic seems to contradict the taper theory, though I didn't go into the periods totally ramped up for a race either.

I skied 5 days, about half of each quite aggressively, in Colorado over Christmas vacation. No back pain or sciatica at all. Makes me wonder what really is going on. View from Condo:

On my run today I played around with observing my pace and the running surface. I'm less inclined to pay much attention to it this time of year and was amazed at the differences. Compared to running on a flat, plowed, packed snow surface the following was observed, maintaining the same HR:

Run in tire track, pace increased 20 sec/mile, I think due just to the change in gait
Add 3-4 inches of snow, pace increased 45+ sec/mile
Add 12+ inches of snow, pace increased by a little over 3 minutes/ mile

Guess thats why everyone tests their progress on the treadmill eh?

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. I read this article, now a couple years old, and it gives some good insight into the American diet. There is no end to the nutritional information or to those hoping to benefit from it one way or another. The long and short of it (and it is a long article) is that America is eating itself to death despite the increase in understanding dietary needs. Regardless of where you stand on the issue there are some excellent points to be made here.

Quite the list

ultraRUNNING online compiled a list of the top 100, 100 mile mens finishers. While there are other lists which attempt to even out the difficulty of the races this is just a pure time comparison. It's a pretty cool list to look over. It covers 20 different races, presumably on the easier end of the 100 spectrum as the more difficult ones would have winners with times greater than 100th place. Jorge Pacheco, 40, CA, 14:12:21, Rocky Raccoon, had the fastest 100 mile time this year. That's about 8:3X /mile for 100 miles. Damn. Some of the names I recognize which made the list:

Wynn Davis
John Storkamp
John Maas