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Sunday, June 16, 2013

How Little Things Pile Up

My roommate... well... lets say that he has a lot of hair... and with a lot of hair... well... lets say that it clogs up the drain over time.  My hair, on the other hand, is pretty short, so it doesn't do that much damage.  Now taking showers is an important part of both of our lives, and over time, there's a good bit of his hair in the drain.  Since it's not my hair... I just let it go and have my roommate deal with the hair.  However, instead of throwing it away in the trash, he has this... interesting habit of... putting it on the side of the bath and even on the wall.  For the first few months, I surrendered and got toilet paper and took them off.  However, this time, I decided that I would do my best to ignore that and let the bath wall grow a beard.  It wasn't the best idea ever... but it sure did make the bath a lot more hairier.

To sum it up, it was disgusting.

Little by little, hair clogged up the drains.  Little by little, the hair went to the wall.  Little by little, my will to 'force' him to clean up the mess was being shaken.  It seemed to me like the wall of the bath was changing color because of the amount of hair on it and I'm sure it would have kept going if his girlfriend had not come...

Now I'm not sure who exactly put the hair off, but after his girlfriend got through using the shower, I went in to take mine and lo and behold, there was a white bath tub.  It was nice... but I wonder if there was a lesson learned or if it was just a phase.

Whether it be hair, or clothes... or anything else, when things pile up, it doesn't start so bad.  It just ends up that way.

Funny thing is... it can be a good thing or a bad thing.  When you exercise every day, the little you do each day piles up and makes a big difference over time.  When you lay around on the couch and don't do anything... it also makes a big difference over time.  Whatever you do, when you make it a part of your lifestyle, it affects who you become.

I'm hoping to add a little bit of mileage to what I do almost daily, and my goal by the end of July is to be able to run a marathon every day for a week.  If I'm able to get to that point in my training, I would feel a lot more comfortable with the Leadville 100.  Running well in a regional race is completely different than running well in a national race.  I'm hoping that I would get myself leveled up to where I need to be to compete with the elite runners and take just a few steps closer to running well.

My goal for Leadville is to get top 20.  Looking at last year's time, I need to be able to run a little under 13 minutes per mile.  Looking at what I've done in the past week, I believe that currently, I'm right on track to being able to run where I need to in this race.  The only factor that I haven't fully been able to calculate is the altitude.  I'm not sure how the altitude is going to affect me... but I'm sure it's going to be tough.  Hopefully, the next several weeks, I'll be able to exponentially grow and  little by little, take myself to the next level... and become a beast.

Saturday, June 15, 2013

Recovering

It's been 2 weeks since I ran the 24 hour race in Asheville NC, and I haven't blogged about that race yet... Currently, I'm waiting for the information to be written down and sent to me from one of my friends that was at the race timing every little thing that went on.  Once I figure that out, I figure I'll be able to write a little blog about the amazing experience I've had.

The short version of the race is this.  I ran long and hard, ran 102.3 miles and finished 1st overall.  I started doing the 5 min run 1 min walk for the first... 16 hours and then after that, I got too exhausted so I ran more and rested more when I finished a loop.  Funny thing is that after the race, I slept, and within 2 days, I was back on my feet playing tag at a summer day camp that I work at.  In 5 days, I did my first run which was 5.38 miles, the next day running 5.32, took a break the next day, then ran 5.79 miles, 6.29 miles, break, and the day before yesterday, ran 6.04 miles.  Yesterday, I was a little tired from spending the week doing housing projects and watching Man of Steel (which was pretty nice, I thought... especially because I didn't expect anything from it, haha) but today... after blogging, I plan on going out for a run.

The first two days of running, the top of my right foot hurt.  I'm not sure exactly what the cause of it was, but it was because of that pain that I decided that I would turn around and make my way back home.  The pace I was going on the first two days of running was 9:19 and 9:15 min/mile so I wasn't going too fast... but I felt like running on the road was still a little too much after the 102.3 miles endeavor.  After the break, my right foot hasn't hurt me and so I was able to run a little faster, at a little over 8 min/mile, but I still don't want to hurt myself and made it my goal to only work on building myself up in distance, so that when I go to Leadville to run that 100 miler, I would be more prepared.

Recovery can be a pain, but at the same time, it's something that your body needs and so we have to go through with it and let the body take it's course.  Recovery slows down if you don't rest, and so rest IS important.  However, resting too much can be detrimental.  In doing that, your body might get acclimated to the resting state and in turn, you won't just fully recover, but also build a bad habit.  Since running has begun to be a lifestyle for me, it hasn't been too much of a problem when I occasionally take two days off in a row, but 5 days in a row... my mind was affected by that and I enjoyed taking that break from running.  Let's hope that the next couple of weeks I continue my training plan and get to where I need to be for the race in August.