Team McAlister

Not much to report on today, just a short run and weight routine at the gym. I can consistently do a mile in 7:13 now, although it results in a heart rate of around 191. According to the chart on the treadmill this is heart-exploding territory and not to be sustained, but when was the last time I let a chart tell me what to do?

A couple of interesting articles for you today! This first article is about how coffee (more precisely, caffeine) lessens the pain associated with working out.

Coffee Lessens the Pain of Exercise

And this one is about how there is an ideal running pace for everyone, at which metabolic efficiency is its highest. For men this pace is, on average, 8.3 miles per hour.

Perfect Running Pace Revealed

These two articles would seem to confirm the validity of my preferred workout method, known as the Drink a Lot of Coffee and Then Run Your Butt Off Method.

I have been listening to a lot of Ratatat as my running music lately. Good, good stuff.

Tags: health, running

The weather has been very uncooperative of late, so road work has been tricky.  It two attempts last week to get in one good intervals session and even at that I had computer problems that made me mad.  Today would have been a 50 mile kind of day except for the spitting rain, 40 degree weather and 30 mph wind!  Instead, I ended up at the bike shop where I was able to retrieve my rollers (finally) and check out the Guru Crono and Orbea Ordu Tri bikes.  The Crono is custom-built for the rider and is the choice of one tri world champ.  The Ordu is maybe the sexiest bike anywhere at any price and is the choice of another world champ.

Anyhow, I got home with the rollers and managed to get in a 35 minute session.  It was nice to have them back; I’ve actually missed those stupid things.  Good training music is important when riding rollers in the garage!  Led Zepplin is great for cranking a fine, fast, high cadence.  However, Keb Mo’ is the challenge.  It’s hard to ride a smooth stroke when you’re wanting to juke along with that foot-tapping, thumping blues he turns out.  Hopefully, tomorrow will see some high-quality road miles.

Tags: Guru Crono, Keb Mo', Led Zeppelin, Orbea Urdu, rollers

Laura’s visit threw me off, and then it rained for a solid week, so in the past two weeks I’ve been running twice. Last week I talked about the 5k and my goals. Well, this week I made exactly no progress. 28:30, three seconds slower. I did, however, do my first 8 minute mile today. I’ll take another shot at it tomorrow and see if I can improve.

Today’s workout music was Girl Talk’s Feed the Animals. (Warning, MySpace link!) It is impossible to get bored with that album. Put a Radiohead riff behind Jay-Z, and you can hold my attention for as long as I can stand to be on a treadmill.

I broke down and bought some new workout clothes. I only have two sets of clothes suitable for running, and I got tired of washing them by hand in the sink after every workout. Next month, perhaps, I’ll finally get real running shoes. This is really just a roundabout way of saying, don’t be surprised if you see ads on the site soon.

Tags: equipment, goals, running

…I’m alive, despite what you might think from my lack of posts lately.

Laura (my beautiful, awesome girlfriend) was in town last week, which meant no training, which meant no updates on training. We did, however, walk so much that my feet hurt for two days after she left, so I’m going to pretend I trained a little bit. Touring the city on foot is not only a great way to take in the flavor of the neighborhoods, it’s a great way to wear yourself out.

Today was my first day back at the gym. I did a 5K run (3.1 miles) in 28:27. I held an 8:37 mile pace for the first two miles, a big first for me. Most of the last mile, after a little walking, was a 9:30 pace, about on par for me. My heart rate was 184 for about the first 18 minutes, and for the last six or so minutes… For a little while I thought my heart might explode, messily, and that would suck because they’d probably make me clean the blood off the treadmill. My next goals are to do three miles at 8:37 pace, and then to break 25 minutes for a 5K, then to add distance a half mile at a time. At the same time I’ll stick to my loosely interpreted version of Hal Higdon’s schedule, with a weekly long run and cross training day.

I’m seven pounds in to my 20-pound weight loss goal, so that’s going well. Laura bought me a stovetop espresso pot, so I’m drinking lots of very strong coffee. I mention this because supposedly coffee, being a stimulant, not only suppresses your appetite and lowers your blood sugar but also allows you to exercise harder, longer. I’d drink it anyway though, I looooove my coffee.

I loaded up some different music on my iPod for the run today. Modest Mouse’s We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank is a surprisingly good running album. I’m to the point now where I don’t have to listen to Dragonforce to distract myself from how hard running is, which I count as progress. Dragonforce is still awesome though. I’m toying with the idea of reviewing albums based on how they help with a workout, so maybe look for that in the coming weeks.

Overall I’m pretty happy with how training is going. After a week off I was still able to accomplish a personal best, and each goal I set I accomplish fairly painlessly. Maybe I should be setting the bar a little higher, but I like feeling like it’s easy to be awesome.

Tags: health, music, running, san francisco