You set a goal, you follow a plan, you execute. That’s what I do, and it works pretty well. The only hiccup is my ability to set realistic goals. For the Run for the Water I wanted to beat last year’s time of 1:08:06. I wasn’t sure how feasible that would be just 3 weeks post-marathon and only a few days of speed training leading up to the race. So how did everything go on the absolutely perfect 52 degree morning?
Here’s a quick and dirty preview for the Run for the Water 10 Miler this Sunday. It’s the second of five races in the Austin Distance Challenge. Hearken back to my bold statement of trying to win my age group for the ADC. That’s out the window. Since setting that goal, quite a few more people signed up for the ADC, many of whom are WAYYY faster than yours truly. It takes some pressure off, but also a lot of motivation. I had some tough workouts this week, including my company’s 3 miler. <sound the excuse alarm!> With that said, I still have a lofty goal.
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p>Last year I ran the R4tW in a surprisingly quick time of 1:08:06. This year, with the weather looking great, I’m hoping to beat that. We’ll see though, since last go ’round was a few weeks before my target marathon, so I was in prime condition. This year I’m three weeks post-marathon. No matter what happens, this race is for a great
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I’m not going to blame the heat (88* and it’s nearly November). It wasn’t because my legs were tired from yesterday’s speed work. I won’t tell you it was due to a poor night of sleep. There’s no reason to think I hadn’t eaten enough in the morning. I wouldn’t even bring up the fact that I forgot my water bottle. It had nothing to do with my extremely high heart rate. No, I’m not here to give any excuses.
This coming weekend I’m running in the second of five events in the Austin Distance Challenge — the Run for the Water. I ran this 10 mile race last year and had a great time (both literally and figuratively). I’ll try to get a race preview up for that, but if not you can certainly expect a report explaining how well I did / how hard I crashed.
In other news, I just picked up a pair of the not-yet-released Brooks Adrenaline 12s! In response to my Twitter post, a local running store responded saying that had some in hiding and that they’d put them aside for me. During lunch on Monday I swung by the Texas Running Co. store and told the girl there were some shoes on hold. She quickly realized “ohh, you’re that Twitter guy. Ok, one sec.”
and off she went to get my secret shoes. I tried them on and did a few quick jogs back and forth in the store to make sure that they felt awesome. Confirmed. I’m looking forward to going on their maiden run later this week.
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p style=”text-align: left;”>In other news, my 6 mile easy run scheduled for Wednesday has morphed into a 3 mile race at
work. The Halloween Hustle, put on by the fitness center, will benefit the People’s Community Clinic of Austin. It’s a series of three one-mile laps in the back parking lot behind my building. If you remember way back, I ran in a similar race only a week after I started at the company. It went well. This time around I’m going to try to both beat my time from last time and also beat everyone else’s time from this time, i.e. win. It’s tomorrow, so you won’t have to wait too long to hear how things go.
Hot dogs are the quintessential street food, which is why it makes sense food trucks all over Austin have been upscaling them into gourmet gastronomy. After months of following The Evil Wiener on Twitter, I finally made the trip over to their truck. The Beast is an imposing truck for sure, promising more than your average wiener. On this day I went with a coworker and his wife (both new to the food truck scene) to see what The Evil Wiener could bring to the food truck party.
Ok, here we go. Chicago is behind me, I took an entire week off, and put together a training plan for the remaining Austin Distance
Challenge. From now until mid-February I’ll be focusing on four races with the intentions of pushing the pace and building strength. In order to get there I put together a new training plan. It’s based off of an advanced 10K plan, so there’s plenty of speed and tempo workouts for some early morning punishment. Check out the TRAINING tab to get a look at what I’ll be doing for the next 18 weeks. Wish me luck!
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The playing field isn’t always fair. Sometimes one team has an unmatched advantage over its competitors that doesn’t just tip the scale but topples it over completely. In the case of East Side King, they’ve become quite the East 6th Street powerhouse and taking over the neighborhood. They have three locations each serving up different menus all focused around the same Asian cuisine. So what’s their secret weapon? Paul Qui, as in the executive chef at the wildly popular Uchiko and contestant on Top Chef: Texas.
It’s true my superfan and I headed to Chicago specifically for the marathon. However, that only took up a brief 3 hours 16 minutes and 29 seconds. The other 57 hours were chock-full of eating, walking, and VWing all around Chicago. Here’s a brief history of our weekend in the Windy City. I’ll break it down into two logical sections.
Well Chicago turned out better than expected. So it leads me to ponder what’s next on the agenda for this Mike’s life. Not all that long ago I made the sweeping declaration that I’d be transitioning my efforts over to the world of triathlon. With the recent sign up for the Austin Distance Challenge and the even-more-recent success in Chicago, it’s hard for me to consider abandoning running for the multisport world. And so here is the plan I lay before you for your approval.
I’ll be the first to admit I’m not good at setting goals and then sticking to them. My most recent case in point is the 3M Half Marathon. Well, I have a new, better example of sandbagging underestimating my abilities. I wasn’t planning on doing any Fall marathons this year, but got recruited by Team VW to run the Chicago Marathon as part of a Volkswagen PR marketing campaign. Well PR I did!
