The Chances

How a 250+ Pound Couch Potato Got Healthy

Saturday, January 24, 2009

Long Run - 11 miles

Today was my 11-mile long run. It went pretty well overall, at least, I think I had the best run I've had in a while.

I do, however, think Sporttracks failed me a bit. Actually, it was the GPS2Power plugin that failed.

I use GPS2Power because it shows weather information, and today's run was annoyingly windy on the way home, to the point of having to walk when gusts would come up (and even then, having difficulty even WALKING because of the wind). On the laptop, I looked at the weather and it looked exactly how it felt.



The splits reflect exactly what happened to me with the wind.


There was hardly any wind before the 5.5-mile turnaround, then suddenly it was so windy I could barely run. The last 3 miles were the worst, the gusts made it hard to even walk.

Then I put the data into the desktop, but look at the weather data:


You'd think it was a completely different run! Anyway, I'm going with the laptop's data.

Today was an 11-mile long run, with a goal of 9:37. I swear, I was confortably running ~9:00/mi until the wind started. In fact, I can remember at one point thinking I might run all 11 miles at marathon pace. Hah, silly me.

It actually began with a stoplight that I had to wait to change, the wind started about a half-mile from there. The last 3 miles were the worst! I had to walk during some of the gusts.

Splits
Mile 1: 9:04.66
Mile 2: 8:52.75
Mile 3: 8:57.63
Mile 4: 9:21.89
Mile 5: 10:35.09
Mile 6: 10:42.93
Mile 7: 10:32.42
Mile 8: 9:58.18
Mile 9: 11:34.01
Mile 10: 12:27.75
Mile 11: 13:05.35

1:55:12, 10:28/mi average pace, and hey, I burned 1267 calories.

When I came in from the run, my wife warned me that my 6-year-old son was in trouble, and was in his bedroom, but be warned about how it looked in there. Come to find out, he had been told to clean up his room, but instead he dumped the contents of all his shelves onto the bedroom floor! All his million books, all his toys, all his clothes, everything.

I was expecting to see this, so I opened the door carefully. When I did, my son was climbing up the side of the bunkbed, and had opened his window and was shouting to his friend next door! He was supposed to be cleaning up the mess he had created.

I have to admit, I lost it a bit. He was having trouble stepping through the mess to get out of his bedroom, so I told him I'd handle it. I picked up the bookshelf and tossed it across the room, then said come here, now.

He's now banished from his own bedroom. He's not allowed in there unless he's actively cleaning with either myself or my wife with him. Right now, he's sleeping in a sleeping bag in the living room. Tomorrow after church, he knows we're going in there, and anything on the floor is being boxed and taken out of the room. He's losing all that stuff for a while, since he can't handle it being in his room.

So today was the great adventure. As far as my long run is concerned, I'm happy with it overall. I strongly believe I would have made a 9:00 pace or less the entire way, had it not been for the wind gusts. Tomorrow's a day off from exercise, and honestly, I'm looking forward to it.

2 comments:

Katie said...

Congrats on the great run!

Pat said...

Your episode with your son sounds familiar. We've all been there. I think taking away all the stuff is a good ideal. We used to put 3/4 of the toys up on the plant shelves. If the kid wanted something, he or she had to be willing to trade something in their room for the new item.

Now, they are teenagers. Sadly, the rooms are still messy. but, they are good kids.