Andrew Schrauben

How about run 500 miles? Back on April 25 I ran my 500th mile and on May 3 I went for my 100th run of the year. Just 500 more until 1000... "I would walk 500 miles and I would walk 500 more..."

Today was a 9.8 mile long run - I ran to Meijer where Amanda met me and we went grocery shopping afterwards. Before and after the run I felt really good and somehow managed a 9:17 pace despite thinking that I was taking it easy - walking up a half-dozen hills, stopping to enjoy a couple scenic views along the river, etc.

Later today we took all three dogs - Haven, Beacon and foster dog Honey - to my Grandma's pasture to run around. We spent two hours hiking around and the dogs are completely worn out now! They got to have a ton of fun - they chased a rabbit, two nesting turkeys, a ruffed grouse, a deer, and a pheasant! Amanda will post the pictures as part of her DITL for today.

Yesterday I put a nifty new post on Why Run? about the physics of speed, pace and energy. I started thinking about it when Katiebell described some frustration when treadmilling recently:

"I was shocked to find that the difference between 5.4 miles per hour and 5.7 was negligible, but bump it to 6.0 (a mere ten min mile) and I could barely keep on pace...6.5 and I was struggling."

Thursday I was on the treadmill doing speedwork and it dawned on me how explain the physics of this phenomenon. If you're curious then check out my Why Run? article which even has a couple of cool graphs!

Woo hoo! I just logged today's run and noticed that it put me over 300 miles on the year.

In 2004, the year I started running again, I ran a total of 284 for the entire year and I thought I was cool beans.

Just keep running, just keep running, just keep running...

During my early workout Thursday morning I passed 200 miles on the year! Including today's run, my 43rd of the year, I'm at 217 miles. Not too bad so far.

This morning was another treadmill party with Amanda. Since my legs were still tired from my Thursday double, I took today easy, running a 9:00 pace for 6.75 miles. To make sure I was running at an easy pace I didn't let myself breathe through my mouth - the whole hour running I breathed through my nose only! I'd never done that before.

I'll let Amanda tell her story, but I'll give you a hint: she hit a pretty cool milestone, doing something she's never done before.

A while ago I wrote about my 2006 goals, but I haven't discussed the goals I made for 2007. There are currently 36 goals on my list, although that's a fluid number since I always reserve the right to edit my goals if situations change - in fact, I just added one tonight! I won't list them all, but here are a select few:

• Plan a race schedule for the entire year

This has proved almost impossible since many races that I may want to run haven't been listed anywhere yet. However, I do have a huge spreadsheet with all known candidate races which I update whenever I learn of a possible race or commit to doing one. First race of the year will be Feb. 10 - the Heart and Sole 5K.

• Run a 5K under 20:08

This is a HUGE challenge - my "modern day" PR is 22:42 at the 2006 Doggie Dash with Haven. 20:08 is my high school PR, back in the days when speed was easy! I'm just hoping to get under 22:00 at my first race this year.

• Run a marathon under 4:00

I'm pretty confident I could do this if I train for it, but I'm not sure yet if I'm going to "race" or just "run" a marathon this year. We'll see.

• Run at least 250 times

Initially I was going to re-up my "1000 miles" goal but decided to go for frequency over distance. I'm training for speed this year and I didn't want to feel compelled to rack up some slow miles. I ran 27 times in January, so I'm well over pace for this goal. However, I'm sure to replace some runs with bike rides when the weather warms up.

• Track Haven's and Beacon's activities (running, swimming, hiking, etc)

Doin' it. I've run 32 miles with Haven and 10 with Beacon, but they also have their own "training" logs. Haven has gone 55 miles this year with either me, Amanda, or both. Beacon has gone 42 miles plus one session of fetch in the river. A tired dog is a happy dog!

• At work - get into a lead role or other such role that better suits my abilities

This is going to be tough. I recently interviewed for what would've been a big promotion but was turned down; still, at least they considered me despite having far fewer years of experience than the job officially requires. My company isn't very proactive so I'm going to have to be rather assertive if I want to find a better role.

• Write six article-type blog entries

My first one was a review of running socks. Let me know if you have any suggestions for future such articles!

So far, so good, but there are plenty of yet-to-be-undertaken goals on my list. 11 more months to go!

101 miles on the year following this morning's run with Haven! We went 3.1 miles in the dark, pops-style. I ran hard to one light pole, then easy to the next one, then hard to the third one, and so on for the whole run. Haven loved the fast part but got impatient with the slow stuff.

101 miles in 20 separate runs, just over 5 miles per run average. Even though it was a goal to run more frequently this year, I'm still happily surprised with how well I've been doing at it. My body is actually getting acclimated to this frequency as my legs can recover from easy runs in less than a day; hard runs still take a day or so.

What's helped me do this is having a plan: Mon, Wed, Fri I join my co-workers for an easy-paced 5 mile run, although I run Friday's as a negative split (easy first half, hard second half). Tue and Thu I do speed work, which can be track laps, pops, hill repeats, tempo runs, or other similar workouts. Saturday is a day off. Sunday is a long run; 8-12 miles so far but that will go up when the weather warms up.

The result is that if I miss a day, my plan is all messed up so even if I don't feel like running on a given day, it's mentally easier to just do it and keep the plan intact instead of having to figure out something.

It's very, very early in the year but I'm on pace for about 300 runs, which is amazing considering that last year was the most I ever ran and I went out just 143 times! Compared to 128 times in 2005 and 101 in 2004. Hopefully I can keep this up, but I'm sure that at some point it won't be as smooth sailing as it has been...