Fabulous Friday!

Happy Friday! Last night was my usual poker night and I told myself that I wasn’t going to stay out too late this week and was going to get a decent amount of sleep for the night. Well, a few beers later and that idea went out the window. I went to bed at midnight and got up at 5:00 this morning. Surprisingly, I feel pretty good today after five hours of sleep. I did exercise some self control and dragged myself away with six people still playing cards. Since the game is at my house, I feel obligated to stay up, but over the years I should realize that it doesn’t matter to anyone else if I am there or not. When the guys are finished playing, they clean the place better than I would myself.

I woke up this morning and headed into the, heated garage, to get my car and realized we played cards in the garage last night and my vehicle was outside (sh@#). It rained all night and the temp had dropped below freezing so my car was a sheet of ice and the door was frozen (fu%*). After a few good tugs, it opened and I was able to start scraping the windows. Luckily, I made it to the train station on time to catch my normal 6:04 train.

Prior to cards last night, I did a 3.1 mile run on the treadmill. I found it difficult to get motivated, but was trying to tell myself positive thoughts”Running never takes more than it gives back” and other motivational stuff like that. Of course, I was glad I decided to run and felt better afterwards. I plan on doing my long run on Saturday, hopefully 8 miles. I am hoping that the weather is going to cooperate with my schedule, as I don’t want to be on the treadmill. I am anxiously counting down the four weeks left until to my first race of the 2009 season, the Shamrock Shuffle 8k in Chicago.

What a Difference a Day Makes!

What a difference a day makes. Today is overcast and foggy, unfortanately no sun in sight. The god news it is still around 45 degrees. The photo above was taken out my office window today. There are 3 guys washing windows on the building acrross the way. That is one job I could not, nor have a desire to do. The building to the left is the Sears Tower, you can see that the fog is pretty thick and visibility is only up to 25 floors or so.

I did manage to get my ass out to run last night after work. I did go outside, in the dark, but enjoyed every minute of the warmer temps. I seemed to quickly run 4.5 miles and shaved about five minutes of my normal treadmil time for the same run. I only saw one other person as I was starting out. The rest of my run was in solitude by the moonlight and stars (very peaceful). I am not sure if I will venture outside again tonight or will be stuck on the tradmill. I will have to see how the weather is later on.

Sunshine at Last

It is a great day in Chicago today! The sun is shining and the temps are in the mid forties. It is only going to last a day or two, but I am thankful for it anyway. Today at lunch, I took a nice walk near my office building. While I was out, I snapped a few photos as I was in shock to see the sun and any activity outside. I think I walked about 2 miles and was gone for 45 minutes. It was hard to think about returning to the office, I just wanted to go home and run.

Last night I was still tired but managed to coax myself into getting dressed into my running attire and headed down into the basement for the treadmill. I seem to have a love/hate relationship with this thing lately. I started out with a few sets of push ups (100 total) and then jumped on the treadmill for a 3.5 miler. I even managed to complete 4 sets of curls afterwards. Really, the hardest part is to get dressed and get going, once I can do that, it seems to be fine.

I hope the sun light keeps me in good spirits by the time I get off work and take my train ride home. I leave the office at 4:15 and pull into my driveway at 6:00, so the commute really can wear on you after a while.

Slacker!

I am felling a little guilty this morning as I took Sunday and Monday off from running. I got home last night and just wasn’t feeling it. I had a slight pain in my knee and did not have the energy and/or motivation to get on the treadmill. I suppose this is normal, but why do I feel so guilty. I feel like I am cheating myself somehow. I know I feel better after the run, but just couldn’t motivate myself to do it.

This morning I feel refreshed and rearing to go and would love to leave work and go run. Unfortunately, that is not an option at this point. I went to bed early yesterday (8:30) and got up at my normal time this morning (4:50). Perhaps that is why I feel so refreshed, maybe I just needed to catch up on sleep and give my body some rest in general. I hope I can carry this energy I have today into the evening after I get home. I gotta get on the treadmill tonight and run.

I often wonder if I could get up earlier in run before I get ready for work. I think that would entail me getting up around 4:00 am. I don’t know if that is even possible. I just seem to lack motivation at the end of the day lately and am looking for alternative ways to fix it. Maybe it is just winter taking its toll on me and things will change when it starts to warm up and daylight is longer.

Garage Door Dilema Tackled

Well, the garage door turned out to be a minor problem, whew!!! My friend Marc stopped by Friday evening and five minutes later it was back together again. It turns out the belt had separated and just needed to be screwed back together.

We did get snow, as predicted, on Friday evening. Saturday morning, I headed out to clear the driveway and sidewalk. I tried to get my snow blower started but it did not sound right. I proceeded to shovel my driveway and sidewalk, by hand and try to start the damn snow blower again. I couldn’t believe it, the snow blower started right up. At this point, I decided to do the neighbors driveway and sidewalk as well. I guess I can chalk it up to more exercise that I needed anyways.

After the driveway I headed into the basement for a run on the treadmill. My wife, Terri was finishing up, so I started out with a few push ups. I warmed up with a set of 10 and then for set two I was able to kick out 50 push ups. I was happy with 50 and continued with 2 more sets of 20 for a total of 100 for the day. By the time I finished, Terri was done and I hopped on the treadmill for a nice 6 mile run.

Later in the day, my son, Dante had his last basketball game for the season. He played a great game and scored 8 points. His team won 24 to 2. By the way these are nine year olds, hence the low scores.

Treadmill Bliss?

Happy Friday! The weekend is upon us and the forecast is predicting 6”- 8” of fresh white powder starting tonight for the greater Chicago area. I guess I can count on running on the treadmill for a little while longer.

Seriously, I have been having a good week of running, all of which occurred on the treadmill. I have been starting to embrace the treadmill and use the positive aspect of being able to easily track my intervals. I have a simulated red blip that circles around a 400m track, so you can identify to actually running on a ¼ mile track outside. It actually seems to help me with my speed work and I am trying to remain positive, with hopes of the weather breaking soon. I guess it helps that I was able to get out last weekend for an outside run to break the monotony as well. Nonetheless, I feel strong, positive and rearing to go, for some reason this week. It could be that I have been closely watching my diet and have stuck to my running schedule. I have a scheduled rest tonight and will also partake in a few liquid refreshments later on with some friends.

On a sucky note, I received a call from my wife this morning while I was on the train and she on her way to work. It appears my garage door has decided to breakdown. I just replaced the thing a year ago with a quiet drive belt instead of a chain drive, in hopes that it is a better unit. Luckily one of my poker buds used to install garage doors for a living so I was able to recruit him to help me. By help me, I mean install the whole thing while I watched and fetched tools. I called him this morning and he told me he would be over later this evening to check it out. I feel a little more at ease and can relax a bit, but still wonder how these things can happen after the opener is just one year old.

I will try to remain positive and hope that it is a minor fix and hope to carry this positive attitude into the weekend while it lasts.

Tuesday Night Speed Work

Running has been going well, despite the fact I haven’t written about it lately. Last week, Friday, I had a night out with old school friends that I reacquainted with through Facebook. The get together was nice, but I just seemed to have not only lost touch with a lot of people, but our interests seemed to very different as well. I am concerned with trying to maintain my health, while it seems others are more consumed to partying. I did my fair share of that back in college, but now that I am almost 40 years old, I have a different direction in life. I am not saying their choices are wrong and mine right, I am just citing the difference in our existence. I am happy with my lifestyle choice and feel the wonderful affects that running and exercise bring me and would not change that for anything. I do enjoy going out once in awhile and a nice bottle of wine or a good beer, but try and limit this to moderation.

On my running front, I took off on Saturday, due to a late Friday night. I had every intention of running Saturday morning, but by the time I got going, I had to take my son to his basketball game and the rest of the day was just consumed by errands. I did get out for a great run on Sunday morning, albeit a little on the cool side at 18 degrees. I went out with no particular goal in mind but did a little over seven miles. That left me at 18 miles for the week. I probably should have had a little more in but I will try this week to be good.

I did start my speed work last night on the treadmill and it seemed to go well. I did 400m intervals and it was a little more difficult than I had thought but I felt great after four miles worth of this. I guess you’re never too old to learn new tricks.