Golden Gardens Loop

When I am pressed for time like tonight when I have chicken and baked potatoes in the oven and the timer reads 30 minutes, I have to get out for a quick run and this loop has filled that role nicely. It is easily completed under 30 minutes and if I boogie, as I did tonight, then it is closer to 25 minutes. I long steady downhill to start, a mile of flat, a ton of steps, and then a flat finish.

Last time I pushed it and finished in 25:01 so my goal was to break 25:00. Not a drop of rain all day but of course I stepped out the door and it was raining. After 8 minutes downhill this didn't matter and I settled into 5-10K pace along the flat portion on the Burke-Gilman trail. I felt awesome. Light and bouncy cruising through the streetlight dappled puddles. Across the street there is an enormous marina in the Shilshole Bay. There has to be 750 boats, many decorated with Christmas lights up and down the main mast lines. A new sight for me.

I hit the stairs as hard as I could and then kept glancing at my watch for the final half mile home. I was full out the last few blocks and finished in 24:21. A huge improvement from last time but that is only because this time I had goal in mind. Getting under 24 minutes will be much more difficult.

The sun is out! A beautiful sunny, crystal clear morning and I was trail running on Cougar Mountain with a fellow runner from work. It really is more of a hill than a mountain, only topping out at 1200 feet but it did have some great trail running. The weather yesterday made the perfect setup this morning with wet trails at the bottom and lightly snow covered at the top. With the sun cresting the surrounding hills it was a picturesque.

It is about a 35 minute ride from home and definitely worth the trip. We started at 8 am and I just followed Cory for nearly 3 hours including a couple stops. The pace very easy but I did not mind, it was just nice to be out for miles on the trails again especially with another runner. I haven't gone for a run like this since leaving Philly and I would say the difficulty of the trails was very similar to the Wissahickon. No killer climbs but general rolling terrain.

Cory's GPS read 14 miles but it didn't seem we were going that slowly, maybe.

I actually had to use my sunglasses on the ride home, it was fantastic. Akin to a 50 degree day after a major cold spell in Philly. Almost rejuvenating. Now I'm prepared for a another 20 day stretch of clouds. I just hope it doesn't happen.

My motivation has been horrible this week. I passed on a couple chances to run telling myself it was to late, to cold, to rainy but in reality it was none of those things... well maybe a little but not enough to stop me from running. I tell myself it is the holidays and I deserve a break but I really haven't been keeping up that many miles to really take a break. Can't analyze it to much but I know if I keep it up I get into a rut and it gets harder to return.

I headed out this morning after the early rain for a run out to Phinney Ridge. This is turning into a regular loop for me. On nice days you get a great view of both the Olympic and Cascade mountains. I thought the clouds would obscure everything today but I was treated to a glimpse of the now snow covered Cascades. 6 miles in 45 minutes.

12 of 14 days so far this December have been rainy. The gloom is beginning to eat away at my "screw the rain" resolve. It's been enough at times to leak into our basement and require some fancy equipment to dry out the rugs before the mildew and mold arrives. This means you are either running just before it rains, during the rain or just after the rain.

I pushed off any kind of workout until 9:15 tonight when the radar gave me the all clear. Instead of the rain I was treated to a very light mist which I really don't mind. I wanted a hard workout in my mind but my body just wasn't into it. Jogged over to a fake turf field about 1/2 mile from the house. Almost all the community fields are fake turf here. I guess they got tired of playing in the mud. The good thing is that the fields are actually decent turf and permanently lined for baseball, football and soccer. I took advantage of the lines to run some lines as follows. I ran out and back to the 10, 20, 40, 60, 80, 100 and 120 yard lines (including the end zones). Tried to run as hard as possible the entire way. Took a complete break to almost fully recover and repeated.

Round 1: 2:56

Round 2: 2:58.

I figure they were somewhere around a half mile but run harder than I would in an 800 interval.

Was planing on three sets but the steak and potatoes I had for dinner were angry with me so I jogged off the damp dark field and headed home. May repeat this one in the future, perfect for a hard workout and easy to measure progress.

A supremely rainy weekend in Seattle, the rainiest in two years. A very rainy weekend here has nothing on a rainy weekend in Philly. Seattle doesn't get deluged with rain, it just pisses drizzle all the time.

I headed out for a quick 3.5 miles, not really because I wanted to run that short but I didn't have any more time. I pushed the pace on loop through Golden Gardens park which included a long trip up all those damn steps. I have counted them but can't recall the total. Maybe 300? 25 minutes.

Today the rain let up and the temp was in the upper 50s. I was sweating on a loop out to Magnolia which is a neighborhood on the hill south of my house across the canal. My goal was to reach a blinking red light that I always see when walking at night. It was hard to judge how far I had to go but it turned out to be 4 miles away at 28th and Dravus. Plenty of hill but I took it very very slow. 7.8 miles in 1:07.

I was walking the dog last night in the schoolyard across the street. The playground over there has an adult sized pull-up bar and picnic benches that are at the perfect height for box jumps. In fact, I think there about a million different body weight workouts I could design with the playground equipment. I can warm up in the house and then literally walk across the street to work out. It was only me and a few kids smoking weed.

Workout

40,30,20,10 jumping pull-ups, bench jumps, and walking lunge. 8:21

I actually cut the jumping pullups in half each round. It would have taken me much longer to do the full amount. I was definitely better at all this stuff this time last year, out of practice, though I am not as sore today as I thought I might be.

Headed to the backyard after Heather arrived home at 8:15. I currently have nothing to lift back with exception of a broken vacuum cleaner. You can't easily throw things in the trash in Seattle like in Philly. Heather was in awe of the things the trash men would pick up there. Queen mattress, broken microwave, bed frame.. just about anything. And I swear if you tipped them 20 bucks they would take a dead body. If the trash men didn't take it the junk man in his beaten up old Ford, stacked high we crap would always swing by. Not here. I am limited to one trash can, anything over that and I pay more. Hence the leftover vacuum cleaner. I haven't had the oomph to figure out how to toss it.

I had to settle for a workout of:

4 rounds - 30 double-unders and lap around the block (about 440M). 9:56.

I forget how hard you have to push in these workouts. I was hurting after the first lap and then you are right back to the rope. Like intervals with no rest. My double unders suck. I don't think I was able to string together more than 15 at once. I'll need a new rope, it snapped 13 reps into the last set.

Dreaming

Thinking of moving back here. Been logging at several different sites but always somewhat nostalgic for the old blog and how much history I have logged here. Seems a waste to just let lie as a dead web-page, like an abandoned pet. The truth is I don't log that much running or working out these days but the fire to do is definitely still there.

I completed a half marathon a couple weeks back and its like "Now What?" Maybe I'll just surf the couch into an over-weight middle age. It always seems I have the best intentions on nights like tonight and then everything gets in the way, then blog and often workouts fall by the way side too. Been kicking around the idea of turning my back yard into a bare bones crossfit gym. Buying only the bare essentials and then finding or building everything else. Large rocks, homemade medicine balls a pull-up bar made of pipe.... whatever I can locate, steal, or "borrow". Throw together nasty workouts with all that crap and still run 40 miles a week, delay the aging process, be the fittest dad within 20 miles and swim across Lake Washington next summer. Yeah, that's what I'll do.