Ferris Brueher

Since my last update almost 3 weeks ago I took a trip to Seattle for a tradeshow.  The highlight of the week took place the night I arrived.  After a quick workout (more on that later) my co-worker Ricky and I met up with a couple friends to take in a Seattle Mariner baseball game.  I have to say that SAFECO is a very nice ballpark.  I was hoping for some bad weather to move in so I could see the roof close but no such luck.  I shouldn't say that because we had perfect weather that night.  Anyway, one of my friends that went to the game (Chris) mentioned that he had to skip a baseball game that his two boys were playing in.  To make things worse, he was supposed to umpire the game.  Luckily they found a kid to umpire so there was no forfeit.  Chris was saying that he felt like Ferris Bueller skipping school to go to a Cubs game.  The only thing that would make it complete would be to catch a foul ball.  Fast forward to the top of the ninth inning and a batter for the White Sox (don't remember who) lifted a high foul ball down the right side.  Sitting in my seat and watching the foul ball my thoughts were: that's going to be foul...that's coming at us...that is coming RIGHT at us...I'd better stand up...I'm going to catch this one!  I didn't end up catching it but, you guessed it, Chris caught it!  Well, I should say Chris got the ball.  The ball first smacked off the bicep of the guy next to Chris, who also happened to be the guy that got us the tickets for free!  After the ball hit the guy's arm, it went to the ground and landed right in his pile of french fries.  I'm not  making this up.  Chris scooped up the ball and, after offering it to the guy who already had a red spot and lace marks on his arm, held it up in the air.  I give you Ferris Brueher:

I guess that makes me Cameron.

I actually got my 30 minute runs in while I was in Seattle which is a bit surprising because I never feel like working out on the road.  The next week I started with another 30 minute run but then decided I needed to find a way to kick up my mileage.  I have been trying to run slower so that I can build up to longer runs but by the time I get done and look at my splits I find that I'm going faster as I run and am averaging just under 9 minute miles.  For my second run I decided to go back to intervals and walk 3 minutes, run 8, walk 2, run 8, walk 2, run 8, walk 2, run 8, and then cool down with 5 minutes of walking. this put me at 32 minutes running and 14 minutes walking and a total distance of 4.5 miles.  My overall pace was 10:17/mile.  At this point I decided that I don't like my warm-up/cool-down walks influencing my overall pace.  For this week I decided to leave them out of my calculations.  I also decided that my new interval training would be to run the first mile, walk 2 minutes, and then run the remainder of the mile.  I would continue the "2 minute walk/run remainder of the mile" interval for 3 more miles (putting me at 5 miles overall.)  I usually run a bit extra at the end to get me close to my office and so far this week I've covered 5.04 and 5.19 miles with an average pace around 9:30/mile.  Considering that I walked for 8 minutes of the 5+ mile run I'm happy that I'm still under a 10:00/mile pace.  My goal for the half marathon would be to average 10 minute miles for the entire race but we'll see how that goes.  Although I'm a little disappointed to be back to intervals I'm excited to be putting up more miles and hope to be up to 6 soon.  At some point I'd like to start decreasing the walking intervals but I'll probably wait until I'm up around 8 - 10 miles first.

Speaking of half marathons, good luck to Chris in his half marathon this weekend!