May 10, 2017 - For Justin!

Today's run was sponsored by Justin! Thanks so much for continuing to help fund the Ty Taylor Memorial Campship Endowment. We're getting so close to fully funding the endowment, I appreciate your help! Soon, YMCA Camp Miller will be able to send a deserving camper to camp for free every year in honor of an amazing man.

Justin joined AES in August of this school year and has been a consistent running partner since. The thing you need to know about Justin, is that he's fast. And he runs far. You can check out his exploits on his blog - An Incondite Adventure. It's been good getting to know him and his wife Sarah, and the icing on the cake is that they'll be joining us in Minnesota this summer to run Grandma's and the Bjorklund with me, so the donation will personalize even more as they get a taste of Northern Minnesota and all it has to offer!

Since he is running the full, he's always looking for miles. I feel like I've been doing a good job of banking miles this training season, but I've neglected pace, speed and hills. So, when Justin started a Tuesday night text chain looking for a run, I figured it was as good of a time as any to recommit to some speed work. I promised a short, fast one and we took off at 5am.

Lately, I've been running miles that are over 9 minutes. When we left Gate 2 of the school Tuesday morning, the first thing that Justin noticed was our pace. The first mile was 8:04, but it felt even faster than that. I let him know that my plan was to run faster than normal and he pretended to feel like it was painful (but I know that he loved it). Mile two was even faster, 7:32. There was much grunting and groaning and even a "you know, we can slow down." But I refused. I had a few secrets. First, the route. I had planned a special route for Justin's run, one I'll talk about in a bit. Mile three was amazingly another negative split - 7:16. I was dying. I knew that I was going to conk soon, but my second secret kept me going. At the five mile mark, I was going to bail out and take an autorickshaw home. Mile four was finally a slow down and I had to walk. We had dropped to a 7:45 and as we started walking, Justin reached to pause his GPS. "Don't turn that off!" I yelled, potentially betraying the secret of the route. We had reached India Gate and we were making what Justin calls, "Jason Coleman lefts." I guess he thinks it's weird when I suddenly stop in front of him, or turn left at the last minute because I go the wrong way, or am about to make a wrong turn. Jeez. Anyway, as we ran from the center of the India Gate traffic circle back out and turned back in, he knew something was up. 

"The Shamrock!"

He was right, it was the run that I designed for him to celebrate St. Patrick's Day. As the officially crowned King of AES St. Patty's, he commissioned a run from me. I added it to my series of holiday runs, which I've included below. He hosted quite a fete on March 17 this year, but unfortunately, I was out of town and wasn't able to run it. The last mile and a half or the last two petals of the shamrock were significantly slower as we jumped fences, crashed through shrubs and tried our hardest to avoid standing "water" in the lawns of India Gate to complete the picture you see below.

Most of you have seen this, but if you haven't, these runs led to a feature the MapMyRun blog. Find it here - http://blog.mapmyrun.com/american-expat-maps-route-art-explore-new-countries/.

The Run, Run Rudolph Reindeer Race

The hard work and sacrifice ...

... yield great results. Turkey Trot 2016

I, as promised bailed out as soon as the shamrock was finished. Justin ran another 5 miles home. He swears to me that he slowed down, but I don't believe him for a second.

Riding home in style

RUN STATS

Distance: 5.55 miles

Duration: 42:18. Blistering 7:37 pace!

For the Whites! - The Scott White 5 Miler, Of Course

Today's run is for the Whites. They've been great running buddies for a long time and I'm proud that they are helping me raise money to build the Ty Taylor Memorial Campship at YMCA Camp Miller. If you can help too, please click on the link and donate! You'll get a dedicated run write up on this blog along with my deepest thanks.

I was hoping that Scott would join me on this run, but the arrival of old friends to Delhi made my early morning wake up difficult and his nearly impossible.

The decision of a route was easy. The Scott White 5 Miler was an obvious choice. You can read all about the intricate naming process of this run here.

I decided to focus on Scott and the things I love about him as I ran. Here are some musings:

1. Scott is coming to Minnesota this summer to join me for the race! He'll be running the Bjorkund and staying at the house for the post-race celebration. Yay!
2. Scott loves to say things about how tough the runs we do are, but he always does them. He has become an absolutely tough runner!
3. He doesn't love street dogs.
4. He's a great friend, colleague and dad.

As I opened the door, I realized that it's going to be one of those years. There was almost no temperature difference from inside the house and outside. It was 81 degrees at 5am. I turned on my music to the playlist that I made for Sunday's half marathon and when I hit the road, the song "Dog Days are Over" by Florence and the Machine was playing. Smiling, I was reminded of Scott's dislike for street dogs and decided I would count the dogs I encountered on the run. Almost right away, there were three or four. 

The day's second focus became clear as I heard the announcement of my overall pace and the split for mile 2. My pace was a respectable 8:10. The second mile split was 8:11. On the heels of my too fast start on the half, or just about any race for that matter, I was determined to focus on paying as much attention to my pace as possible. I was going to try to hold my pace for the entirety of the run. 

After another four or five street dogs on my counter, I received split 3. It was 8:15. I was off the pace by only five seconds. Trying my best to simultaneously pay 100% attention to my legs, while also ignoring it in an effort to not over-think it, mile four had slipped past me. The over-thinking had caused me to speed up to an 8:00 mile. Aghast with my 15 second discrepancy, I carried on. The funny thing about that mile though, was that I could tell I was running slightly faster. The fifth and final full mile clocked in at 8:18. In an effort to balance my pace and offset the 8:00 minute mile, I ran my slowest mile of the morning.

For the final half mile of the so-called 5 Miler, I decided to replicate Scott's most famous move - The Scott Sprint. He claims he doesn't do it on purpose, but as he's complaining about the pace or the distance (while being fully able to do it, mind you), Scott ALWAYS speeds up for the final stretch home. This is almost always unpopular with those of us that are running with him.

It was also during this last half mile that I realized had counted 12 street dogs. As I was wondering if the unlucky 13th dog was lurking in a bush waiting to attack me, the song "Get Lucky" by Daft Punk came on. I knew I'd be safe.

Thanks for the donation Scott and Melissa! More importantly, thanks for being great friends and dedicated running buddies. You make my training much more bearable. 

RUN STATS

Distance: 5.49 miles

Duration: 44:22

Temperature: 81 degrees at 5:13 am

Soundtrack: An absolutely serendipitous playlist!

Training Starts Tomorrow!

This year I've made the commitment to run my first full marathon and I'm stoked!

Tomorrow is the first "official day" of my training program, so I thought I'd write a quick post about what I've been doing in my first two months of 2014 running.

I made a goal to run 800 miles this year after a humbling failure of last year's 1000 mile goal. With that in mind, I was out on the road trying to get some miles under my belt. In January I managed 45 miles and so far in February I've done 40 more.

What's keeping me running these days? A big part of it has been the "gamification" of running on MapMyRun. Through their "courses" feature, I created a course at Nehru Park and I've been hitting it often to push myself to the top of the leaderboard. I've let my friends here at school know about the course and now we're engaged in some healthy competition to have the fastest time in the Park Loop. Today I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out just how the scoring works. I'm a sucker for badges, leaderboards and the overall mind-control of gamification.

Also, I've managed two runs with progressively negative splits!