First 30 minute erg piece in years

First 30 minute erg piece in years
Originally uploaded by Matt Hawk in Austin

My buddy Jon let me borrow his ergometer for the next 2 months for Big Sur cross training. Did 30 minutes at zone 1. Feels good.

at least my photos are getting better

Me and Jill after Marathon
Originally uploaded by Matt Hawk in Austin

like this one of me and Jillian after the marathon. Looking a little better than the picture of Jillian and me after last year's. Gotta find the bright spots. :-)

Other news.... Just signed up for the 20K trail run at Camp Eagle on March 30th. I'm going to take the kiddos and will meet my father-in-law, brother-in-law, and my two nieces for some camping and general outdoorsiness. The kids have never been camping before. I'm really stoked!

In other other news, in addition to her soccer game (Go Pink Storm!), I signed Jillian up for the 4th annual Hawk Hustle (the kids k) . Thinking about getting some custom "Team Hawk" t-shirts for the extended day of cheering. We'll see.

Jackson with straw action

Jackson with straw action
Originally uploaded by Matt Hawk in Austin

Damn Fine Day in Austin

Man, the weather was nice today! Ran about 6 and half miles on the trail ...

http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/invitation/email/accept.mb?senderPk.pkValue=16172&unitSystemPkValue=2&episodePk.pkValue=5040395

Just beautiful! Per my new training principal, kept my pulse between 130 and 140 bpm, which means I was running sloooooooooow. That's ok though, I fet great, had great form, and took in the scenery... flora and fauna ;-) . The hope is that keeping the long runs slow means I'll be able to increase the overall weekly miles and feel less beat up at the same time. I also hope to be able to increase the speed at which I can run and still maintain an optimum heart rate.

Got home and weighed 142. Woo hoo! Now, hopefully I didn't ruin that with my lunch trip to Phil's Ice House where I had beer, cheeseburger, and ice cream. Oh well.

I was thinking on the way down to the trail that I can't wait to get back in to a group training environment. Brew runners rock. Will need to consider my options over the summer to run with those guys if I can swing it.

AT&T race report

Good:

• Parking at my building for free, warming up in my gym, and popping out of my building 5 minutes before the gun went off
• Finding friends at the start and running the first few miles with them
• Meeting Lindy for miles 14-20
• Chad's tailgate at mile 18 or so - next year, I'm definitely stopping for a mimosa
• Running the last couple of blocks with Jillian
• Post race canneloni - Cassie made it from scratch
• I feel better after this marathon than I did after last year's
• after getting home and having eaten, the scale said 243. Haven't seen 243 in over 5 years.
  

Not as good:

• 7 minutes slower than last year. This sucks the big one because I trained way harder this year.
  
• slow death over time....started out great, but got slower and slower and slower
• headache starting at mile 15
  
• survival shuffle from mile 20 on
• seeing the 4:15 group pass by, then the 4:30 group....shit, almost got passed by 4:45

Takeaways

• Eat more the last two weeks before the race. Don't try to lose weight.
• Get real about what pace you can actually hold for 26 miles. I don't think its in the 9's even on a good day.
• It was a tough day for a lot of folks.

Goals for Big Sur

• Run the last 10K faster than the previous 20 miles
  

3M recap and diet discovery

Wanted to quickly recap the 3M Marathon. In short, it went really well. We came in at 1:56:03 (Lindy and I) and put together a strong, disciplined race that was a PR by about a minute. I think I probably could have run it faster, but I'm glad I didn't as my real focus is the marathon.

I've been reading this book called Body, Mind and Sport - by John Douillard and one of the suggestions in the book is to eat your largest mean mid-day and de-emphasize breakfast and dinner. I decided to try it this week. I've been eating a pretty light breakfast except when I'm hungry after a run and need a breakfast taco. I eat huge lunches (Hoovers one day and Roaring Fork another day..mmmmmm) and then just a protein shake for lunch. I'm also trying to get to bed by 9, which helps because I start to get hungry :-) . I feel pretty good this week, but the crazy thing is how the pounds are dropping off. I was 244.9 on the scale this morning. I haven't seen that side of 245 in a LONG time. I didn't start this to lose weight, but its definitely having that effect. The weird thing is that its not accompanied by a lot of effort. I'm more going with the natural flow of what my body wants. That this would be so effective flies in the face of a lot of modern 'wisdom' on diet (like 6 meals a day for instance), but that conventional wisdom has never brought me much in the way of results. It has me thinking about next year's marathon and being 30-40 pounds lighter. Can you say eight-minute miles?

The one down side is that I'm a little worried that the weight loss might be killing my glycogen reserves. I'm not hungry during the day and I feel good. I guess we'll see how tomorrow's long run goes. That's usually when you can really tell if you screwed up your diet.