Nerd x2

Well I was unhappy with my data from a few days ago so I dug out my old excel files and did some updating and now graphed 3.5 years worth of data.  (The type of runs aren't all updated for past years.  Also who isn't fully updated either.  It's basically impossible to remember what type of run it was 3 years ago.)

The disclaimers from last time are still in effect.  I know this data isn't perfect.

I need to run more with people to get more data here.  I did go back and add a bunch of runs with Kelly and all the runs with Jen. I was able to figure those out but it was time consuming.  Too bad years ago I didn't think of all the stuff I'd want to track.  Back filling out data is hard work.  My runs with Callie are deceiving. It makes it seem like she's slow but really two of those are at a very high elevation that is hard to run in for me and another one we were running on extremely muddy trails and had to climb over some trees.

Before I thought there should be more of a trend that if I ran further I would run slower.  Look at 2010 and 2011.  That's the data I was talking about.  In 2012 I was injured for almost all the months of it so that makes sense too. In 2009, I started off running after knee surgery so I ran .5 or 1 mile at a time and really slow and I slowly increased and improved time so that trend also makes sense.   The labels wouldn't show up right on the graph with the years. If I changed one of the points to something with letters, then it would work but then I had 5 graphs so I just went with manually labeling this one.

What do you think?   My brother told me this is all ridiculous.

Nerd x3 post

8.16

I started my morning not feeling great. I thought it was allergies so I bagged my run.  I did a few things on my to-do list but just didn't feel like sitting at my computer.

I ate some cereal for breakfast at 11:15 and watched TV.  I used my laptop there for a little bit.  I was freezing. I wore my hoodie with the hood up plus Dave's hoodie with the hood up.  I had a blanket plus an afghan on.  I wasn't warm until Poly decided to share her body heat.   I napped about 2 hours.  

I slept through lunch (but had a late breakfast) so at 4:30 I ate a little pub cheese.   When Dave got home, I didn't want to eat. I had warned him so he brought a sandwich from Google.   We watched some TV.

We both went to use our computers but I was miserable again. I decided to nap on the couch and watch TV.    I napped another 2+ hours.   I woke up to go into bed. Well Dave woke me up when he turned off the TV.  The sound of it turning off is loud.   We ended up talking on my way to bed, in bed, so I didn't fall right to sleep. I know if I nap I can't talk on my way to bed or I stay up for hours.  Yet I did it anyway.  Then I couldn't fall asleep until 3.  I read my email, played solitaire, read big brother feed updates, read facebook, and played more solitare. I stopped a few times and put the iPad down but then after tossing and turning I picked it back up again.

8.15

Since I have been spending so much time reading and learning, I needed to clean desperately.  I woke up and started doing that with breaks of sitting at my computer to check my email.  I did wake up to 25 emails and most were from actual people.  I finally carried some stuff down to our storage room.  I carried the recycling to the car. (Maybe one of these days we'll recycle it.)  I carried our Goodwill donations to the car too. I might have made 6 trips downstairs.

We got our grill back.  They opened our balcony days ago but we were waiting for the contractors to get it back to us.   Now we just have to buy propane and we can cook on the grill.  Well it's scary high out there (to me anyway).  So maybe I'll make Dave cook until I can somehow get more used to it out there.  Dave even said it was slightly scary for him because he's too tall for the railing.  I told him now he has me even more scared.

I did laundry and used my drying rack outside on the balcony.  I believe this is the first time I will have clothes dried outside in all my life. I had to put one shirt under another shirt because it kept blowing off the rack.

I talked to my mom on the phone for an hour.

I made grilled turkey and cheese for lunch and then the same thing for dinner. I made Dave grilled ham and cheese.  He tells me it is supposed to be grilled cheese with a touch of ham not grilled ham and cheese. I said to me there should be a substantial amount of ham.  What is your opinion on this?  I made mine about an inch thing with meat but knew Dave wouldn't like that so his was less than half that. He still said it was too much.  Too bad I didn't have a picture of his to compare to mine. I almost called my  grilled turkey and cheese a turkey melt but I think they have more things on them which I didn't have.

I cleaned off the counter height counter and most of the normal counter today.  It was the first time the junk has been off of there since we moved in.  Now I want it to stay neat.  I doubt that will happen.  As soon as Dave came home, he opened a package and had the box, fan, packing material, and receipt already all sprawled out over it.   I also swept and mopped the kitchen floor and vacuumed the rest of the apartment.  It is nice to see stuff clean but boy do I wish it would just magically get clean.

Our hallway is finally clean going into the office. Stuff accumulated there that needed to go down into storage.

After dinner, I went for a run. I almost forgot too! I finished a few minutes after 8 and it was still light enough for my liking.

I showed Dave stuff I did with all my photoshopping skills on the running pictures. Then he got distracted and said he knew how to fix something.  Over an hour later he was still sitting at my computer doing stuff in Photoshop. I also showed him how to remove the signs on the edge of the trail.  He was impressed.

Here's an example of a before and after that I showed him. I'm impressed by it. I'm no professional so my standards are lower. It doesn't take that long to edit the photos but my problem is that I go in and edit all 150 instead of picking the best 5.  What do you think of the photos above?  Can you pick out everything I removed?

We watched Big Brother.  Then I went back to my computer to work on all the little things on my to-do list. I really don't know what people do that don't use a computer all the time. I feel like there isn't much else to do around the house.

I accidentally stayed up past 3am and still only got 72% of my to-do list done.  There were more things I could have done but the time wasn't worth it at that late in the day.  I wanted it to be my top completion and it's tied with 7th. Maybe someday I'll post my To-do list completion percent graph.

Week 5 - Training

Previous Summaries

The Smart Coach plan has me doing 3 mi, 5 mi (tempo), 2 mi, and 10 mi

Hal Higdon's have me doing 4 mi, 4 mi (400 repeats), 3 mi, 3 mi, and 8 mi (plus lifting)
The other Hal Higdon one has me doing 4 mi, 2 mi, 4 mi, 40 min cross, and 6 mi

This week I have done 3 mi, 3 mi, and 7 miles.   See details below.

Monday: I went out to run in the evening.  I was debating not running because I felt I should be doing something else. Then I thought more about it and realized runs are short.  I was going to run 2 miles since that was a minimum suggestion for the week.  Then I thought that why should I start with the least. Every time I run, I should run as far as I can that day (within reason/training plan) so that I don't end up with too many longer runs pushed together at the end of the week.    It was starting to get dark and the last mile or so was past my comfort zone but I stayed in the well lit park.

I ended up finishing near my door at 3.03 and when I run 3.03 I might as well make it a 5k. I did that but then realized I still can't get in the door near me so I started the timer back up and ran to the other door.   The first 2 splits were my worst but I still thought I made my 9 minute pace but my 2:18 was really 2:18.7 and other splits were on the high end so when I guessed that each split was .5 higher I was still wrong. I was close though.   I set out to run a 9 minute pace and hit 8:50. I set out to run 2 miles and ran 3.15.  I could tell the 3rd mile was harder but I was also going faster.   I am so glad I still have my old Garmin to use while my new one is being shipped back.

Tuesday: Rest (Well Dave and I went to the trail to take pictures so I got a touch of running in.)

Wednesday:  Since I didn't run in the morning because I was waiting at home for our grill to be delivered, I ran in the evening.  Since it was late and I didn't have time for the full speed workout, I thought I'd do the other easy day. I set out to run 2 miles but maybe 3.  I was going to do it slower to rest up my legs for a run Thursday morning.  

I planned 9:30 pace. After the first 2 splits, I was not doing well.  I got a 2:25 and 2:26 (really 2:25.8 and 2:26.8 so even worse than I thought) and my goal was 2:21. Starting out a run with penalty seconds is never good for me but then I made it all up in the follow 2:11 split.  The weather was cool that even for the first 2 miles I was chilly.  I almost went back at 2 miles but figured what's an extra mile and I need to get these extra miles in when I can.

This is my second run in a row that I got better with each mile.  I got lucky both times crossing the main street because people were already waiting at the cross walk and they already hit the button.

All these fast times recently have me curious what I should make my tempo run pace.

Thursday: Rest


Friday:  I moved my long run to Friday since I had been missing them in the past. The bad news is I still need to get in my speedwork for the week. 

I set out to do 9:30 pace and then switching to 9:40 pace  even though Smart Coach says to do 10:35 pace.  I changed to 9:40 before even looking at my watch.   I started out at a 9:51 pace. I thought that was bad but then my next split had me at a 10:46 pace.  It was just all around bad.  I tried to speed up and only managed a 10:20 pace for the 3rd split. 

My legs felt like lead.  I wanted to quit but I didn't. Before leaving the house I wanted to do 7 miles or 7.1 miles. (The .1 is because I ran/walked with Dave right before and we did 1.4 miles so technically I would get 8.5 miles on my legs.)  

I  would have done the distance perfectly but instead of standing waiting for the walk sign I just kept doubling back on the sidewalk.  I always hate to turn around because all the distance doesn't get accounted for so the Garmin says your speed is slower than it really is but I figured I could get an extra little bit and that'd help my overall mileage.

When I ran/walked with Dave, I wore a long sleeve shirt. It felt cold. When I was standing outside waiting to acquire satellites, I still had on my long sleeve shirt and I was still chilly. I thought that was a good sign that the run would be cool. Man was I wrong.

Saturday:  Rest

Sunday: Rest (I was going to do my speed workout but I woke up and my calves were killing me. I decided it was better to rest them now than to make them get worse.)

Total Miles: 13.73 (Not happy with this.  An extra .25 is there to guess what I ran the day Dave took pictures of me running.  I did wear my Garmin but I paused it to change lenses and I forgot to unpause a few times. Also I walked with Dave to next photo spot and had it running)
Total everything else: just a few walks plus a run/walk with Dave.
Total suggested by training plans: 20, 21, or 16.

Final Thoughts:
I started off another week well and then fall apart on the weekend. I missed my speedwork this week but didn't miss my long run.  Sigh. I should miss an easy run.  I'll try that if my calves start to feel better. 

R - I'm a Nerd

I have recently discovered R.  R is a free software environment for statistical computing and graphics. I just learned about it recently. I started playing it in. I should probably do a few tutorials because I don't really know anything now.  I probably know less than 1% about the program and yet I still have fun with it.  When I started plotting, I emailed people to tell them about my plots. I'm pretty sure they all think I'm crazy.

If you want to make a histogram, they look way better in R than in Excel. 

I did graph a few things.  Most things I have done you can do in Excel, but then R takes it a step further and lets you do a little more.    Note the regression line. It isn't really that accurate.  Before creating these plots, I assumed that the further I ran, the slower I ran. I thought it would be distinct. As you can see it is not.

Then I thought about it and thought that sometimes I run with other people and I might run at their pace (slower or faster) so I figured out how to do some plots with Who I ran with too.

I like these plots a little more.  You can sort of see that the further we ran, the slower we ran.   I'm not quite sure why my runs with Jen increased so much. I think it might be because at the beginning we went slower and did 4.5 miles but then as we got better, we started going further but we were also in better shape.

Note:

1. In my base data, if I ran with more than 1 person, I only listed 1 person.
2. If I ran 1/3 of the run with someone else and 2/3 on my own, I listed the other person
3. Most of the times that I ran/walk with Dave, I did not put them in my base data.  If I ran/walked with him then ran on my own, then I put it in the file. 
4. I would have graphed the mile pace versus mph but couldn't figure it out.
5. I have run with more people but if I only ran with them once or twice, I removed them. I kept Jill on because I liked that regression line.
6. I had to go back and fill out half of March, April, and May last night because I was slacking off back then. So I might have missed running with someone. 
7. Update: Someone pointed out that the lack of trend could also be because I've run when injured.

 I need to make a file with only my data with Dave and not when I ran on my own before/after.

On a side note when I was going through the data, I had all the distances written in my file but not the total time. I was using my Garmin tabs to fill that out if I filled those out. A few weren't on there so I made a guess. Then once I realized since I ran it on the treadmill, it might be in my running notebook. It was. And I was 1 second off from my guess!   Then later I had another one I didn't know and guessed. Then I realized it might be on the Garmin site. It was. I was 1 second off again. Both of my guesses were 1 second too slow.  Maybe I don't even need all this data since apparently I can guess. Or maybe all the data, helped me guess the missing times.  I based my guess on where I ran and the time of year so I knew what shape I was in. I also know that treadmill runs tend to be faster because they weren't as hilly.

Time to look into this program some more to see what else I can do.  I have a lot of files of data but they don't mean that much so it's hard to play with the program to see what cool things to do. I just need more data.  I need to run more to get more data. I need to run with Hilary more times so she can be included.  I need to do other things (I just don't know what) so I can get more data.  Any suggestions?

Nerd x2 post
Nerd x3 post

8.13

I keep sleeping in later and later. I'm still tired. I haven't been sleeping well because I'm freezing. I sleep with my hoodie hood up. I also have an afghan on top of my covers. I think I need to move it to touch my skin.  Dave mostly sleeps with 0 covers and with a fan blowing on him. I don't know how he does it

As I was waking up the construction workers were removing the scaffolding outside.

I got up and started reading about SQL.  It was pretty fun that I lost track of time. I realized in time to get ready and head out the door. I was 5 minutes early for lunch so it was pretty good timing.  I met a former coworker.  We walked to some soup and sandwich place.  It was similar to Panera but not nearly as good.

After I got home, I got to reading about data and SQL.  Time sure flew. I did the examples. It was such a fun time.  I really  have no idea why I haven't been reading educational books before.  They are way better than fiction.

I took breaks from reading/learning to do some other minor things on my to-do list to break it up.

I ended up napping in the afternoon. Poly napped too. I was glad because she was annoying all morning. I set my timer for 30 minutes so I wouldn't sleep long. It took awhile to fall asleep so when it went off, I set it again for 30 minutes.  I watched a little TV in there.

I put our table together on the balcony. One of the chairs is missing one of the little feet. I really hope you can buy replacements for them somewhere. Putting together the table was hard since it's so high out there.  The third floor seems a lot worse now that the scaffolding is gone.  If I stayed crouched down, it wasn't so bad.  It was probably funny to see me working on it and constantly moving the table because I didn't want to move.

I went for a run. I waited a little long and worried it'd get dark. Then while I was out, I decided to go 3 miles instead of 2.  The last mile was definitely a little too dark.  I stayed in the park for that. Even running the the parking lot right near my apartment felt dangerous. I'll have to make sure I leave myself enough time in the future. I would need to be back by 8:20. It'll just keep getting worse too.  I like running in the evening because it is so cool. It's great to not have the sun beating down on me.

Dave got home close to 9.  He had a late meeting at work.  He also brought me dinner. It was tasty.  We watched Rachel Maddow while I ate dinner.  I then showered and by that time it was 10:30.

I went to sit at my computer to do some more learning but ended up getting distracted by youtube videos. OK the videos were educational about Excel macros so I guess I was still learning. I don't know how people functioned before the internet. It must have been hard to learn random things.  I love the internet. Anything I think of that I want to learn, I just google it, and learn about it. It's great!

How I Document My Runs

I run wearing my Garmin watch if at all possible. I upload to the standard connect.garmin.com site.

I view my data on the site and click on "Splits" in the upper right corner. 

I then copy and paste that into a new tab in excel. I have a file for each year and a tab for each date.  I also have a few summary pages too.

Once I copy the data in, I run an excel macro that I recently created. I made a video of myself completing the macro. I should look into a way to record what my screen is doing. It is all very quick.  Once I run the macro I have the summary columns on the right and the detailed summary below the data.

I am not the best at macros so I still have to do a few things manually. I manually have to update A25 and A26. The macro doesn't know what type of run it was or the weather.  In addition to that if the last line of data from the Garmin has less than a minute, I have to go manually add a 0 before the number.  It will say ":56" instead of "0:56" so then it doesn't register. I will figure out how to have the macro do this but right now I do not.  I also have a few macros based on the mileage but I will have the macro figure that out too.  If it is between 3 and 4 miles, I run a different macro than between 4 and 5 miles. I also have to confirm that the best split does not take into account the last split that is less than .25.

I  then highlight the summary table and print it to Snagit. I crop it down and save it for my blog posts.

I used to save as html but I didn't like that as much because I couldn't put it to the right or left of text that way.

This is what the macro looks like that I used above.  I copy and pasted data from another tab and recorded the macro. Then I went in to update the macro so it would always paste to the current sheet. I also added the end statements to make the 3.15 mi cell update to the actual portion of the mile I completed.  I might not have done it the best way, but it gets the job done.   (You can hit Alt + F11 to view the macro you have. You can also hit Alt + F8 to run a macro.)

In my main summary tab, I document the date, time, distance, who I ran with, type of run, description and location.  I also have target pace and distance but don't always have those filled out.    The file creates mile pace and projected finish at current pace for a bunch of different long races.

I have another tab that has the weekly mileage totals. I also have 2010 and 2011 off to the right of my 2012 data for some quick comparisons.

I have a monthly mileage totals tab too.  I also have my Goals for each month too.  I have 2011 monthly totals on this sheet as well.

I also have a tab comparing marathon training at different times so I can compare week 10 to week 10 in training to see how that goes.  I also have off to the far right my half marathon training in 2010.  I ran more for the half than I did for a marathon. I'm the worst at training.

How do you keep track of your running miles?  Do you even keep track?

8.11

Shirt: NY&Co, Shorts: AE
It wasn't until 3/4 of the way through the day that I realized I was wearing my running shoes and not normal shoes.

My days are all blending today. I can't believe I haven't been working for almost 2.5 months or that I've been in California for almost 2 months.

We gave Poly a bath today.  She did not like it. At least the tub has the shower doors versus a curtain rod.  She mainly stood in the corner and I dumped water on her and scrubbed her up there.

Dave and I went out to lunch. I finally mailed in my garmin. It'll probably be 2 weeks before I get a replacement. They have to receive mine then mail a refurbished one.  I had mine ready to go for a few days but never went to the Post Office.

We went to Pot Sticker King for lunch.  We were the only white people in the place.  All the table settings just had chopsticks on the tables but when the waitress brought us our appetizer plates, she brought us forks.  I looked around and none of the other tables had forks. I'm so glad she gave us them.  I got some sort of chicken and it was spicy. The vegetables that came with it were even worse though. I about died when I ate the carrots.

We went to Whole Foods on our way home.   We only bought maybe 1/3 of the shopping list.  We had to go there for the ground meat.

We carried our patio table upstairs. We still have to put it together. I wonder how to do that. My dad put it together the first time and the driver took it apart when we moved.

I snacked and watched the season finale of Unforgettable.  Then I went to read and about 3 pages into it, I fell asleep. I was sitting up in the chair too. I woke up and still had my finger pointed to right where I left off.

Dave woke me up to cook the meatballs. We did that. They didn't turn out as well as last time. They were quite airy. I'm not sure what happened there.  They also lacked some flavor.  They were still better than any meatballs we had around here. (well besides the ones at BJs but those are mini and those aren't in a red sauce.)

We watched Master Chef then Newsroom.  Dave went to sleep and I started reading my SQL book. I was doing some of the examples from the last chapter since I was reading in the other room and didn't do them. I also took facebook, gmail, and internet reading breaks.   Around 3 AM I figured I better go to sleep or I'd end up continuing the cycle of nap, stay up late, wake up a normal time, repeat.

8.12

This shirt just doesn't look nearly as good when I'm not wearing a necklace.

We went to Target in the middle of the day. We were going to go to Safeway but never did.
The rest of the day was TV or nothing.  I can't even remember.

I went to run close to 9pm. I wasted so much time all day that I missed daylight.

8.14 - Monochromatic

Skirt: Athleta (purchased the long version and wish I hadn't), Shirt: Loft, Necklace: F21, Sandals: Target

Before I went to sleep, I checked out EBEW and realized that it was the day to upload something. What were the chances.  So I saw the theme and went to sleep.  Then I woke up and knew I had to get dressed to fit the theme.  This is what I chose.  I would have never put them together if it weren't for EBEW.

I decided to try to take some pictures outside.  I tried my balcony but those failed. So I went outside. All the good shade spots were taken by the contractors so I walked to another spot. I saw a ton of people while I was out.  My remote only works 10% of the time.   It was just all around awfulness when trying to get the pictures.  I still got a few but I took 10x more than I normally take when I'm trying to take a ton and lately I've been taking 2 since I'm not showing off a fancy outfit.

Daily Details:

I woke up. I read some SQL. I read some facebook. I read some emails.  I wasn't that nervous.

I had my interview.

I had a frozen dinner for lunch and watched some TV.  Then I went to take the pictures above.

I went to Target then Safeway.  I had a weird encounter walking into Safeway. I'm walking to the entrance from my car and a guy in an SUV stops and yells "my GOD you are beautiful" and then apologizes for scaring me. Then talks more. He said "I know you aren't from around here. Where are you originally from?" (I want to know how he knew I wasn't from around here.) He asked where I worked. I said I was looking for a job. He asked what kind of work I do. He asked if I found a nice place to live. And I'm pretty sure he asked a lot of other questions to which I'd just shrug. His name is Tom.

As soon as I got in Safeway, I decided to email that story to Dave. Then after that I am walking and just pulling out my list and an employee goes way out of his way to ask if I need help finding anything.  Then he said if I ever need help to let him know.

I was carrying 4 big canvas bags food of groceries and decide to check the mail. We have tons of mail + 2 packages. That was fun to carry up. I wish someone could have gotten a picture of it.  I used my face to hold the top of the package.

I picked Dave up at work. We went to Carl Jr's for a pre-dinner. Then we went to Bay Trail so Dave could take some pictures of me running.  The sun was awful so we didn't get that many.  I'm having to change the curves in Photoshop to make it so my legs are insanely pale with the sun reflecting off of them.

I then spent 3 hours editing them and messing around in photoshop. I put a few online.

Week 4 - Training

Previous Summaries

The Smart Coach plan has me doing 4 mi, 4 mi, 3 mi, and 4 mi (because it is a back down week)
Hal Higdon's have me doing 3.5 mi, 3.5 mi, 3 mi, 3 mi, and 7 mi (plus lifting)
The other Hal Higdon one has me doing 3.5 mi, 2 mi, 3.5 mi, 40 min cross, and 5 mi

This week I have done 1 mi, 1.5 mi,  3.3 mile (speedwork),  and 5 miles.   See details below.

Monday: I went to the gym with Dave. I did 1 mile on the treadmill with a hill workout. I set the treadmill to 7.5 mph and my time was 8:04 for 1.0 miles. Since I only ran 1 mile, I didn't get too far into the workout but even with what I did run, I could barely tell the hills. Then I lifted weights for my legs. I would have done more but Dave was done.  Then I did 5 minutes of abs.

Tuesday: I went for a 2 mile walk with Dave. It wasn't even fast.  No run for me :(

Wednesday:  Rest day... or actually I was just a big slacker but if I say it was a rest day it makes me seem like less of a slacker. 

Thursday: 1.5 miles on a treadmill... It was awful inside but it was dark. I did a little lifting after. It shouldn't even count but I did a little.  I ran on an incline of 7%. It was extremely hard so then I decided to back down the incline each .25 then back it back up.  I set the speed to 6.6 mph because that's just how I roll not because I had a specific goal in mind.  That's a 9:05 pace normally but with a 7% incline is a 7:13 pace {source}.  No wonder it was so hard.  My total time was 13:39 for the 1.5 miles which comes out to an average pace of 9:06. Half my workout was uphill so that's .75 miles which isn't a lot and probably wouldn't classify as a hill workout.  I definitely needed a good minute into the run at 0% incline to catch my breath from the hill.  I did some weights after.

Friday:  I set out to do 3 miles. Well I was going to do 4 miles but it kept getting later and later and I hadn't had anything to eat or drink yet so I decided to back it down to 3 miles even though I really wanted to do 5 miles. Then I thought I would do 400 repeats like Hal Higdon's program. I thought I had read just 20 minutes earlier that I should do 5.  But I was looking at week 1 for 5. Oops.  The speed work this week should have been a 35 min tempo run. Last week I should have done 6 400 repeats. 

My goal was 2:00 for each 400 because it said to do them at 5k pace and 8 min miles is my 5k pace. It was surprisingly hard to keep that pace.  I made it on all of them. My last 400, I was trying to make it my fastest and clearly that didn't happen.  I tried to make crossing roads happen when I was on my recovery jogs.  I did have to stop the timer twice to wait for the walk sign leaving my apartment complex but that was .13 into the workout and with .13 left. I swear I waited a couple minutes the second time.  That light takes forever, especially when there are on cars waiting.

I find it interesting how speed + recovery is roughly the same as normal speed throughout.  I only have these comparisons for 4 miles or less recently because I haven't been running further. I need to keep this pace for an entire 13.1 miles. This was roughly my pace at my last 10k. This was only 7 seconds slower. 

Saturday:  Rest day again :(

Sunday: I was so exhausted in the morning that I decided I'd sleep in a little and run in the evening. Then evening came and we were still grocery shopping. I still had time to go but then Dave suggested watching a TV show I'd been begging to watch more of so I said I'd run on the treadmill.  Plus it was getting kind of late that it might have been slightly dangerous by the end of the run. 

I knew the treadmill would be boring so I went in with the plan to run 1 mile before getting the remote to turn on the TV. I thought that might break it up.  At 1 mile, I fixed my sock and stretched but did not get the remote since someone else had joined me in the gym.   At mile 2, I decided to find the remote. I walked all around and looked in the corners and finally found it in the drink holder on the treadmill right next to me!  Right near 2.5 miles the treadmill started to go into cooldown mode. I was thoroughly confused. I kept increasing the mph back up and decided to stop it at 2.5 and then just started over.   Before starting to run the 2nd set, I tried to increase the time and couldn't. Later I realized it by default is set to 20 minutes and you have to increase the time while it is going.

For the first .75 of each mile, I set the treadmill to 7.2 mph. For the last .25, I set it to 7.5. I did this throughout. Usually I was a few seconds late at changing the speed because I was writing down my splits.  At 4.25 miles, I threw in an extra one at 7.5 mph.  The last .1 miles was a cooldown at 6.0 mph.

I wanted to run further but for a treadmill run it is pretty good. I added the extra .1 so that it is my longest training run so far. 

Total Miles: 10.91 (Not happy with this)
Total everything else: weights 2 times (well 1.5 since I barely lifted that 1 time), walk 1 time
Total suggested by training plans: 13, 20, or 14.

Final Thoughts:
This was a back down week but I wasn't supposed to back down as much as I did. The only thing I did was run a certain number of times but all runs were short.
The highlight of my training each week seem to be the speed workouts that I never used to do before. I have run on the treadmill more here than in my last 3 months or so in Pittsburgh and the weather is great here!  I'm not progressing on my long run. I need to move it to midweek when Dave is at work.  I've slacked off so long that it might be hard to get my yearly mileage goal in.  I definitely need to get some running buddies.  I looked up some running groups so maybe I'll quit being a chicken and go give one a try.  I really just want to get a 10 mile run in. Maybe I'll do what I did when training for the Philly Marathon and when I had to increase my  mileage, I ran 5 miles continuously and then used Gallaway's method of walk run for the next 5 just to get them under my belt. 

Photo Credit: Paul Meyer Photography (and cropped and edited by me)

8.10

I've worn this outfit before but liked it and thought it was nice for a picnic.
Shirt: Sam's Club, Shorts: American Eagle Outfitters, Sandals: Kohl's, Necklace: Charlotte Russe, Earrings: Target, Sunglasses: found

I woke up and meant to run right away. I finally ran 2.5 hours later. I ran so late I was almost late to the picnic at Google.  After my run, it was entirely too hot so I plugged in Dave's fan that used to be in his cube.

The picnic was pretty impressive.  I got so tired standing in the sun.   We only stayed a few hours. I got full. I met a few of Dave's coworkers but not many.  They had a ton of food. They had beer and wine. There were also a lot of bouncy house type things.  There was also Gladiator Jousting. That was pretty funny to watch.  I forgot to take pictures of all the food I ate and still got a lot of pictures of my food. I like carnival food. I wish I had a ponytail holder with me because partially eating my hair slowed my eating down even more than normal.

After we got home, I napped for 3 hours.  Dave knows me so well that after he woke up, he took some pictures of me napping.  I don't know why I like it so much but often times after I wake up I ask him why he didn't take my picture.  Poly napped with me.  She was so cute.  She was like a furnace though so halfway through my nap, I had to cover my leg.

Then we watched TV. Finally at 9pm I ate dinner. I watched more TV.  Poly decided the best place to sleep was behind me when I was partially leaned forward.

Once Dave went to sleep, I used my computer and did some things on my to-do list.

8.9

 I read about SQL but quickly and probably don't remember any of it.

I cleaned off the table beside my desk to get it set up for the TV.

I did some laundry and other house work.  I should do more but then I'd just stop and watch TV.  On commercial I might get up to clean or I might just fast forward.

I walked over to Sprouts to get some stuff to cook dinner. I only bought things for dinner and it cost me 16 bucks and I already had the pasta and sauce at home.

We decided to pay for something online so we could watch the Steeler games. Dave set it up. It was too slow going through the TV so we had to watch the game through the computer.  We started it probably 2.5 hours after the game actually started.  Once the game was over, I went to the gym and quickly ran on the treadmill and did some weights.  Then we watched Big Brother.

Dave went to sleep and I watched Rachel Maddow then did a few things on my to-do list.