Here are a pictures from our Ragnar experience. I wanted to share them.
Our team name was the Toe Jammers, we got to decorate our Vans, sadly it all washed off in the rain within minutes of use decorating the vans.
From my previous two posts its quite obvious that I participated in the Ragnar Relay. Its is a 36 hour run that takes place at different times of year all over the country. This particular race started in New Haven, CT and finished on Harvard Campus in Cambridge, MA. In all the race was about 190 miles and involved 12 runners. We ran constantly without stopping, which means that somebody on our team was running constantly from the time we started until we got to Boston.
Note: I’m writing this post at 11:00 pm with only about 5 hours of sleep last night so please forgive the typos and grammatical errors. Actually you don’t have to forgive all of them just enough of them so this post is on par with the rest of my other postings.
On Friday I decided to run 4 miles. I had never in my life run a contiguous 4 miles, thinking about it now I’d never run 3.6 miles either but 4 is a nice round number and I decided that would be how far I was going to run. I loaded up my ipod with a list of songs I new were going to pump me up. I opened google maps and mapped out the run I was going to do and set out. I got home 39 minutes or so later and was stoked. Not only had I just run 4 miles but I had done it under 10 minutes a mile. This was a really big deal for me. I came in the house feeling like a champion. I couldn’t wait to tell my wife but I couldn’t because at the time she was sleeping, to pass some time I opened mapmyrun.com to record my victory.
My joy was short lived because when I finished entering my run I was shocked! I had only run 3.75 miles. I could not understand how this was possible. I had expressly mapped out a 4 mile that I was now being told was only 3.75 miles. My previous attempts at not waking up my wife were forgotten and in my frustration I got a little too loud. After a few very frustrating minutes I finally realized my mistake, illustrated below.
The route on the map is what I ran, the dotted black line is part of the original route that I didn’t end up running. Here is why.
Heading east on Cambridge Street towards Harvard the road dips down into a tunnel and I wasn’t sure if there was a sidewalk so I decided to turn south early. With my legs burning the last thing I was thinking was how this was going to affect the total distance of my run. In fact about 3 minutes earlier I was telling myself that I really didn’t need to be running 4 miles today and that if I turned around where I was I would end up with a cool 2.5 miles which was more the sufficient. Some how though I was able to muscle through those thoughts and finish this run.
Once I had a chance to cool down I have to admit I was really proud of myself because as I said earlier I wanted to turn back really early. There were several points during this run were I considered turning back early and calling it quits but for some reason I didn’t. I kept telling myself that I’d stop at half way knowing full well that every step I took away from home was another step I would have to take back. For some crazy reason I figured that if I could just get half way I’d quit and be done. It doesn’t make any sense now but it did then.
When I hit halfway I just kept running. My legs were burning and I was really tired and wanted to be home. The quickest way to get home was to keep running and not to stop….
I’ve been running now for about 4 weeks. I don’t know why but I’m starting to enjoy running. I’m not sure yet why I’m liking running but I have a few ideas:
About 10 days ago I ran my first 5k, it wasn’t a official 5k or a race against anybody but myself, but I did it to see if If I could do it without stopping or walking. I pushed myself and finished in about 30 minutes. The next Saturday I wanted to run again but my knees really hurt. Talking to some friends I came to realize that maybe I started running to far to fast. In two weeks I went from not running to a running a 5k.
I cooled down and did not go running again until the next Tuesday were I ran 1 1/2 miles and then again on Friday I ran 2 1/2 miles. I was expecting to get about 3 miles runs by now but I don’t want to ruin something I’m starting to enjoy by getting injured and having to stop for a few weeks.
This blog isn’t about my running adventures but it is a tool that I can use to report back and keep myself accountable. To prevent my loyal readers (all 2 of you) from drowning in a flood of running related posts I’ve setup a running page where all future running related articles will be posted. That is unless they’re cool enough to make the front page.
Pages don’t work the way I thought they did. I thought I could create multiple pages and then post to those pages but that isn’t how thing work… Here is what I put on that page.
April 28
It was 85 degrees today ouch! But I ran 2.7 miles, woot! Here is the route I ran.
Last night I decided this morning would be the day I finally start running. I’ve been thinking about starting, but it just hadn’t happened yet. I knew I could procrastinate and delay starting more or I could get off my butt and go running for the first time in, a long time, let just say 6 weeks.
Today I woke up early got out of bed and stepped on the scale: 234.8. Ok ,I thought, plenty of room for improvement, lets get to downsizing this body of mine. I got dressed, mapped out a 1 mile route on google maps and started out the door.
At first I was running fine but as my lungs started to rebel and my hands started freezing I thought to myself, what the heck am i doing? I felt like an idiot, I wasn’t running fast, I’m sure my form was terrible and I know that man walking his dog was laughing at me. Some how I pushed through the persecution and finished the my first mile run.
I got home later (lets just say later) then did some stretching and hoped in the shower. As I was in the shower I started thinking that maybe just maybe I can do this. I can torture my body 3 times a week for a few minutes a day. Feeling pumped I hoped back on the scale hoping to see an immediate effect: ERR! Wow I’d lost so much weight that the scale didn’t know what to do. It was shocked and the only thing It could say was ERR! Just to make sure I hoped back on the scale a second time only to see: 234.8 for the second time.
I use scales enough at work to know how fickle a cheap scale can be. Sometimes 1mg of something when weighed will read out .98 mg and if you weigh it again the scale will say 1.02 mg. Expensive scales don’t do this but cheap ones do. Rembering that we bought our scale at target for $8.99 I feel confident that the second measure was wrong. I’m sure I lost at least 10 pounds on that run.
