Know Thigh Body

This was going to be a big weekend for my half marathon training.  I was all set to run a personal best 9 miles on Saturday.  Unfortunately the weather had different plans.

We woke up to snow this morning

While the snow might be gone by tomorrow morning (they are predicting rain/snow showers throughout the night and early morning) the cold weather won't.  Looking at the forecast it should only be around 30 degrees at 7am which is the time I usually run.  It looks like I've got 3 options.  Option #1 is to suck it up, put on some warm running gear and battle the cold.  Option #2 is to wait until later in the day when the weather is in the 40s and 50s.  The last option is to bust out the long run on my nice, new treadmill.  I'm leaning toward option #3 because I'm a wimp about running in hot/cold weather, and it's tough to do it during the middle of the day because that's usually when we're out running errands.  The good thing about my treadmill is that when I run on it my Achilles feels great.  The bad thing is that it's boring and it's just not as satisfying running a long distance on a treadmill compared to completing a long run outside and looking at the course and my splits on the Garmin website.

Around 6 months ago my friend Chris (the ringleader of the guys trip to Vegas to run the half marathon) told me that at some point in my training it would stop being about my cardio shape and more about my leg strength.  He was right.  Usually at the end of my long runs my lungs feel pretty good but my thighs and feet are pretty sore.  I naively thought that running would build up my leg strength and no other exercise would be necessary.  Now knowing that that isn't the case I decided to start doing squats and lunges.  I've been running a lot so this shouldn't be a big deal right?  Wrong.  After two days of squats/lunges I was afraid my rubber legs wouldn't get me through my softball game.  I did them again on Wednesday and by that night I was hurting.  Do you know the pain I'm talking about?  It's the pain where you just have to drop the last 6" on the toilet (TMI?) because you just can't lower yourself all the way down.  Fortunately my run on Thursday morning loosened my tight muscles a bit so I'm not hurting too much right now.  I guess I should have started this about 4 months ago.  Oops.

This kid makes it look so easy

The Broncos take their 4-0 record to Jerry-World on Sunday to play the 2-2 Dallas Cowboys.  While Vegas only has Denver as 7 point favorites it sounds like the rest of the world has Denver winning by a lot more.  As for me?  I'm not so sure.  Maybe it's from watching the Broncos in the post-Elway years, but I'm nervous.  I was nervous about the Giants game and I was even nervous about the Eagles game.  I guess it depends on which Dallas team shows up.  I would love to be an arrogant fan and always believe my team is going to blow out the other teams but I'm not.  I'll sit on my couch on Sunday afternoon clutching the remote control living and dying on each "Omaha" and "hurry hurry" Peyton Manning shouts out.  What I need to do is look back at all the 12-4, 13-3, and 14-2 seasons Manning had with the Colts and realize that this Denver team is better than (IMHO) all of those Colts teams.  Anyway, this should be an exciting game (much better than next week's game against Jacksonville will be) and I'm looking forward to it.  I think Denver will win a close game (it won't be the worst thing in the world for them to have to face some adversity in a fourth quarter).  DEN 34 DAL 30.

Manning explaining to Tony Romo how to order at www.papajohns.com

CSU is off this week after their high scoring affair (and win!) last week against UTEP 59 - 42.  CSU had a nice fake FG for a TD near the end of the second quarter that increased their lead to 28 - 7.  At the time (in between fist pumps) I thought they were rubbing it in a bit but it turned out to be a good thing they got 7 because UTEP scored 21 straight points in the third quarter to tie the score at 28 - 28.  Fortunately some key plays (including a defensive saftey) helped propel the Rams to their second win of the year.

Have a great weekend and Go Broncos!