Sunday, August 10, 2008

Have passport will travel

I received my new US Passport last week. On page 2 it states: "Nationality: United States of America". I still have to look at that a couple of times before the realization sets in. I am now officially a citizen of the USA. To celebrate I think I am going to take a quickie trip to Mexico, just because I can... More likely, I will start making some plans for a return trip to Africa, hopefully before the end of 2008.

Despite relentless heat and high humidity, and one hugely over-hyped Tropical Storm (Edouard), the week’s running was right on target: a total of 40 miles with a long run on Saturday of 10 miles; just over 7 miles on Thursday including some hill workouts, and an easy 6 miles on the other days. Mostly I kept very close to my target easy/long run pace of 9:17, although nothing is ‘easy’ in this heat.

I am warming to Brad Hudson’s ‘Adaptive Running’ program, which I have decided to try out for the upcoming San Antonio Half Marathon in November. I will attempt the ‘Level 3’ half marathon program, which ranges from six runs and 32 miles in week 1 to seven runs and 64 miles in week 14. Of course there will be some adaptations here and there; if you’ve run as long as I have you know why training programs should always be written in pencil. What I really like about Brad’s program is the absence of periodization: hill, speed, strength and endurance elements are mixed together throughout the training cycle. This morning’s 6 mile easy run, for example, included 3 short hill sprints. I've always been skeptical of the concept of dividing a training cycle into distinct phases with heavy emphasis on just one type of training (speed, strength, power etc.) in each phase.

Barring injury and extreme weather on the day, my goal for San Antonio is to break 1:40:00, which would be an improvement of less than a minute on my personal best of 1:40:48 set in Austin this spring. Nothing magical about the 1:40 mark for the half marathon, except that it will qualify me for the New York Marathon. Definitely something to strive for!

5 comments:

Fishmagic said...

Will have to check out your program, sounds interesting.

While up in the Finger Lakes region this week my wife and I sat beside some plant Physiologists from South Africa. I thought of you.

Van 1- Hall said...

bert,
pre-injury I was debating on doing san antonio and hanging out with Remmy's Dad...make sure and PM him about meeting up...heck of a guy. Stay cool out there in the heat!

cope said...

Allright on the passport! It's like getting your Boston marathon official time in the mail I would think. You can actually look at it and say "hey, look what I did!" Just read through some of your stuff. Very interesting. I am running the San Antonio full so if you want to meet up while you are in town please let me know. I know that Remmy's Dad is putting together an FE although I have not looked at the thread in quite some time.

Alexandra said...

Thank you for stopping by my blog! I see you are a big time runner and that is great.

Being a runner and having a passport and willing to travel then you should consider running in Calgary sometime, maybe Jan Feb or March. If you would like to see what running in those months is like here, check out my post called "Got Game" Jan 20th and "Thankful it was only 12km today" March 30th.

Also if you like looking at pictures of mountains and snow click on My Snowshoe Reports on the right. The photos may cool you off on a hot humid Texan day!

Happy Feet! Happy Running!

go annie said...

Congrats Bert on getting your passport! You are soooo close to hitting that 1:40 mark. How awesome would that be to get into NY? You can do it!