another beautiful spring morning

Another beautiful spring morning for a run. It was 49F and shortly past dawn when I left the house. I ran down to the W&OD trail, on the trail for a few miles, and then home. 4.49 miles at an 8:53 average pace. The birds were chirping, the honeysuckle was in bloom along with the flowering trees and the air was sweet with their perfume.

I did a 10 minute warm-up at an 11 minute pace. I almost did no walking; when I was out of breath, I just slowed down to a 10+ minute pace, and that allowed me to catch my breath without losing as much time.

BMI goals

BMI is an interesting thing. Your body's fitness level boiled down into one, simple, easy to remember, meaningless number. I've always poo-pooed the number as too general to be useful.

Here's a research tidbit that got me thinking more about BMI's implications:
"The present work reports on the physical characteristics of the 392 (310 males, 82 females) starters and 270 (216 males, 54 females) finishers of the 2007 Western States Endurance Run, one of the largest 161-km trail runs in North America. Among the starters, mean (and 25th to 75th percentiles) body mass index (BMI) values were 23.2 (21.6 - 24.6) and 20.6 (19.4 - 21.9) kg . m (-2) for the men and women, respectively. ... Among the top-5 overall finishers, mean BMI values were 23.2 (range 22.4 - 24.7) for the men and 19.8 (range 17.3 - 21.1) for the women."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18401807

I am currently in the ~26 BMI range, and am heading steadily towards a near-term goal of 25. Which makes me happy, and I should be - I'll be healthier and run better. But it is a long ways away from my aspirational goals of finishing well in ultra marathons, and it looks like a BMI in the 23/24-range is required.

know your sweat rate

One of the questions I have been meaning to answer for myself is to know my sweat rate so I can better calculate fluid and electrolyte replacement. Water loss has been a big problem for me.

Yesterday I ran about 9 miles and I lost over 5 pounds of weight. That's over 2.25 liters of water, which seems like a lot considering it wasn't a particularly hot or humid day.

Along with the water, I also lost sodium, potassium, and chloride, though that is harder to calculate.


No surprise then that my medical incidents on hot/humid runs have usually resulted in 3+ liters of intravenous saline.

A couple of links about sweat rates and sweat composition:
http://www.gssiweb.com/Article_Detail.aspx?articleid=65
http://jp.physoc.org/cgi/reprint/155/3/490.pdf

beautiful morning run

It was a beautiful morning for a run. By 9am it was 60F, a little on the humid side. I figured I would make a loop of about 5 miles.

On the way home I discovered this wonderful place. There are several gas and petroleum lines buried and criss-crossing in the several miles around our house. Almost all of these are wide-open grassy areas, most with running trails down the middle (but a few are more native and unkept, and some are considered back-yards of the houses next door). When I saw this broad strip (perhaps 70 yards wide or so) of grassy-ness stretching out as far as I could see, I was so inspired I just had to go - and go - and go. There are some places where there is little more than a deer path, and some other places where the neighbors probably would have scolded me if they had been awake. But it was glorious. I had a rough idea where I was but it took a while to find a route that connected with home. The end was 9.07 miles at a 10:24 pace.

training run

Still getting back in the groove. I ran 3.22 miles this morning at a 9:28 pace. It was a little overcast and humidity was high because of the recent storms but it was very pleasant to be out.
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back at it

I ran 7.88 miles on Saturday morning at an average 9:54, including lots of hills. I took off on a route I'd never been through before, very pleasant in the early morning. There are places near my house where gas lines or petroleum lines have been buried, and the area over the lines is mowed grass. Some of the areas have had asphalt running trails laid down through them, others are just grass. All are fun to run through because they are open and wide and green - kind of like fire breaks in the forest. Saturday morning warmed up quickly with a high around 85F.

Sunday was rainy and wet, just worked around the house and listened to the sump pump run.

it has been three weeks since I ran last. I would have run earlier this week but my travel schedule conspired against me. It takes me a good two weeks to fully recover from a bad cold. Guess I'm getting old.

getting back in gear

I'm almost through being sick but I still have a "productive" cough, though it is worse at night.
It was very pleasant out at the end of the day, maybe 55F. I ran a couple of miles, nice and slow. I felt good, and it helped me to sleep better.

The half marathon is coming...