I'm Back (This Time It's Lane, and It's for Real)

I have neglected this blog for a while and that's been bad.

I have decided to can the math posts for now.  They take too long to write well to fit into my schedule on a consistent basis.  They may reappear in the future or not, we'll have to see.  Regular running updates will resume, starting immediately:

The past couple weeks have been interesting.  I put in weeks of 65.5, 29.9, 70.0, 50.2, and 26.0.  Why the inconsistency?  The 29.9 mile week was done in three days (I took 4 off due to no power and dangerous conditions: I wasn't getting any kind of quality sleep and was just trying to survive) and the 50.2 was the first week of a taper for my two goal races of the "season", the Hot Coco 5k and Jarred's Run (a 5k/10k).  I took second in the Hot Coco 5k and earned my first cash prize of $50.  I suppose I won't quit my day job.

I had anticipated a quicker race than actual materialized.  I had planned to stay comfortable the first mile and start picking people off in the second and third miles.  Instead, a pack of 4 ended up running at a pace that was fairly comfortable for me nearly the entire way and the race didn't break open until about half a mile from the finish.  I was caught a bit flat-footed but still managed to take second with a near-PR in 16:26.

Leading up to Thanksgiving morning, I had won the 5k at Jarred's Run twice, won the 10k once, and taken second in the 5k once.  I had decided on the 10k to try to break my relatively soft PR (35:11).  I assumed the race would be a lonely time-trial.  I started out quick, with one of my high school teammates who was running the 5k flying out of the gates.  I wanted to keep up with him and when he started to fall behind, I pressed on, passing the half-mile in 2:27 and mile in 5:07.  I knew these were too fast so eased off a little.  I got to the 2.5k mark in 8:26 and the 5k in 17:18, around 30 seconds ahead of my first 5k the previous year.  I had slowed down quite a bit and when I turned around I was surprised to see someone relatively close behind.  My mind somehow made me think the lead was only 20 seconds (unlikely...) so I really started to push myself.  I ended up putting the next 2.5k in 8:18 and the second 5k in 16:50 for a total time of 34:08.  I was really moving and pushing myself through the second half.  Second place came in around 37:50, so I don't think the estimated lead of 20 seconds was very accurate.  I decided to take the rest of the week off as if I had just finished a running "season".

I will write about the lessons learned from this summer and fall of training and racing soon.

Until then...

 Alex: cue blogging montage

I'm Back!

Whoa, two things happened for the first time in a while today: 1) I'm writing a blog post! 2) I went for a run!

Holy smokes, what am I doing? As far as the blog post goes, just finally getting back to it and ruminating about my running.

On the running side though, I think I am finally going to get back into it. I've said for a while now that I would get back into running when I felt that I really wanted to. So, finally it seems that has come. For a little while I have been wishing I could run more, but was frustrated by the amount of time that work took up. I finally came to the realization that I simply need to sacrifice a bit of sleep for it (probably not more than 1/2 hour a night), and that I think it will be worth it for the sake of my sanity and my energy levels (and my waistline...).

Besides, I am planning on running a Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving day, so I want to do more than just waddle through it. How good of shape can I get in over the next three weeks just running a few miles most nights? Probably not very, but it will be better than nothing. So, here goes.

Lane, if you would be so kind: Cue the training montage

~Alex

Training, Week of 10/2

I'm back on track, so to speak.  After a week almost completely off, I decided that it's time to get over the existential crisis that I've been having with regards to running, make a training plan, and then get about the business of breaking my 5k and 10k PR's.  I picked two races and did indeed make a plan.  Even better, I have followed it to a T this week, running 54.5 miles in 6:47:57 (7:30/mile average).

It was a tough week.  My legs were sore pretty much all week and my hip started tweaking out.  I know how to deal with both of these and keep going, so that's what I did.  I put in a decent long run, track workout, and tempo run so the quality is there while the quantity builds back up.  I'm back in the hunt and may even remind myself of the runner I was.  I have been feeling a little lost without a team or a "season" to race in but I recently heard my generation referred to as a "lost generation" and that is an identity that I refuse to accept.  So here I come, ready to show 'em a clean pair of heels.

Training, Week of 9/11; Novel in a Month Update Super-post

Running this week:  I started off strong, but fell apart over the weekend, taking Friday and Sunday off.  I ended the week with 37.7 miles in 4:36:35 (7:21/mile average).  Not exactly a dumpster week but not great.  Brianna and I headed to Worcester for a medieval fair and didn't get much sleep over the weekend so although I have time to run on Sunday, I decided not to push myself too hard while I'm tired.  I've been invited to run with some of the engineers who run at work, so I'll probably start joining them at lunch, which will take some logistical thought in order to get my work done and run and not be at work all day.  Should be a nice change and will hopefully serve as extra motivation to get out and put the miles in.

The next corporate 5k is on Wednesday.  I should place highly and will need to run pretty quickly to help my team in its rivalry against the local shoe store.  I'm looking forwards to it.

Novel in a Month:  I'm behind.  I skipped a couple days and I need to be at 18,333 words to be on pace at the end of the night; at this point, I only have 10,707.  This means that if I don't get any writing done today (it's not looking promising...) then I will have to increase my average to 2069 words/day.  I don't know if I can do that, but I'm going to keep trying and we'll see how many words I can get in before the end of the month.  I have also decided that if I finish the story before the end of the month, then I'll stop writing.  I am 20% of the way through and I haven't finished setting the story up, so I don't know if I'll finish early after all.

-Lane

The Challenge Continues (Part 1)

I began the challenge of writing an entire 50,000 word work of fiction on the beginning of the month, intending to finish by the end of September (giving me 30 days).  You can read more about that here.  I have done pretty well so far, reaching 5,029 words in 3 days (I have not begun for today, I suppose this is a form of procrastination).  Some things I have noticed:

• My writing style leaves much to be desired.  I write in the same style that I speak and I don't think that I'm very good at communicating ideas clearly all the time.  It is definitely not the same as the books that I have read and it's not different in a good way.
• Writing 1667 words per day is a lot harder and more time consuming than I expected.  I was surprised when it took me two and a half hours the first night.  I thought that I had this great story all thought out but I've decided to let it flow and that's been taking more time than I anticipated.
• As with time, I also find that there are more words than I expect the longer I wait in between checking the word count.  Perhaps having it so available at the bottom of the screen is not a great benefit.
• Getting ahead is not going as well as I expected.  I find that while I'm in the exposition phase of the story, I'm not super excited to decide what happens next and so I'm quite ready to be done when the daily milestone rolls around.  Hopefully when I get to the action the writing as well as the story pick up.

I have changed the paper to be 8.5x5" so that I don't have to look at quite so much blank space when I begin each page and it seems to make the writing go a little faster.  I tried to explain why I'm doing this but I couldn't really come up with a good reason.  I'm not trying to make a quality story, just a quick one and I guess it's just for fun.  Maybe I'll learn something from it?

-Lane

The Challenge Begins

A little while back, I issued a challenge to my best friend and associate blogger, Alex.  He politely declined, despite my best efforts to goad him into accepting.  Nevertheless, I have decided to forge on ahead and undertake this task of Herculean proportions:  I will write a 50,000 word work of fiction starting today and ending on or before September 30^th, 2011.  Furthermore, I will (as stated in the original challenge) start the work off with the sentence “He could not grow a very good beard”.  I will be focusing on quantity of words over quality of story (as you might imagine, 50,000 words is a lot to try to create in only 30 days).  I will be trying to create an interesting story, though I have not decided how and if I will distribute said story.

I have been thinking a lot about how to accomplish such a momentous task.  My strategy is thus: I will attempt to write between 2000 and 1700 words per day.  The minimum average daily word count is 1,667 and so if I can stay at the top of that range (close to 2000) I will be able to accrue a cushion so that I can take days off from writing if need be.  This will be something that I will be trying to avoid but sometimes life gets in the way of hobbies (just look at my ability to run with anything resembling consistency.

I have also done some thinking and outlining of the story, though the proof is obviously in the pudding.  I could start and decide to take the story in an entirely different direction as I originally thought as the characters begin to develop (and hopefully, take on a life of their own).  At least for now, I know where I am standing and in which direction I am facing.  I don’t want to give anything away, but I will be writing a science fiction piece.  Writing entertaining stories has never been my strong suit but this is mostly for my own enjoyment so the story will be what it is, however good that might be.

Wish me luck!


-Lane


Edit: Day 1 is finished.  I started around 9:00pm after procrastinating.  It took me quite a bit longer than I expected but I wrote 1,729 words in about 2.5 hours.  Hopefully when the story gets rolling it will be quicker!  I have also learned the cost of procrastinating and will work harder to avoid it in the future.

What Motivates Me

What motivates me?  I find that this is an interesting question to explore because if I really take a hard look at what is really motivating me, not what I thought was motivating me or what I told myself motivates me, I can learn a lot about myself and hopefully that will lead to some self-improvement.

What motivated me to work hard when I was in school?  Impressing my teachers or making my parents proud wasn't a true motivator (though I am pleased that I seem to have done both).  Even the objective measures of success, grades, didn't really seem to motivate me too much.  The longer I was in school, the less I was upset by lower-than-usual grades even though I tended to improve throughout my entire scholastic career.  Continuing to dig deeper, I think that doing a good job, in and of itself, is what started me off.  Later, success became a "habit" and I was able to continue working hard on a particular task, even if it no longer interested me.

What motivates me to work hard at work?  I have had a number of jobs that didn't test me or fully utilize my skills, some of which I liked, some of which I didn't like.  Regardless, I wanted to do a good job and what I finally found worked as motivation was to find the co-workers that I cared about and work "for them".  Whenever I had to do an unpleasant, menial, or boring task, I would remind myself that the harder I worked, the easier and more pleasant my friends' work would be.  Hopefully they would reciprocate and work hard "for me" but I was okay if they didn't.  Now that I have a challenging job, I enjoy working hard to stretch my abilities and really utilize my gifts as much as possible.

What motivates me to work hard at running?  I used to train to run faster times, to place higher in important races, and to help my teammates beat other teams.  Those were easy reasons to find to get motivated to run when I didn't feel like it, when it was hot or cold or snowy.  Now that I'm out of college, I don't really have those reasons pushing me out the door and I really can't put my finger on what it is that keeps me running.  Racing with my co-workers doesn't really cut it for motivation and I'm not really finding it in myself to push the way I would need to to lower my times further.  Perhaps success at running has become another "habit" because I'm not sure that I could stop if I wanted to.  Perhaps there's something else there, but the thing I don't understand is that the discipline and hunger that I used to have is missing.  I have resolved a number of times to start running in the morning and have failed pretty much every morning.

What precipitated this introspection?  Strangely enough, it was a streak of recognition for success.  I was given an appreciation award at work for some work that I did and I also finished 4th in a local 5k in 16:40 which I believe is my third-fastest time ever (and fastest on the roads).  Now that I have shown what I am capable of, I suppose I'll have to keep it up.  One more piece of motivation!

-Lane