I love a good breakfast sandwich. I also love waffles. I love maple, too. So, when Dunkin' Donuts invented a maple-sausage waffle sandwich last year, they unknowingly created a pipeline directly to my wallet.
Now, they've brought it back, except now -- as if it wasn't already ridiculous -- the waffles are now blueberry waffles.
I'll be honest, I wasn't sure about the blueberries. I'm a maple syrup fiend, so I usually just opt for plain pancakes or waffles and load 'em up with maple. Oh wait, chocolate chips are good, too. But anyway...I was a little worried about how blueberries would mix with the taste of the sausage, egg, and cheese.
I was worried for nothing...the taste of blueberry is subtle rather than overpowering, and the delicious aroma of the blueberry waffles is a definite positive.
Really, the only negative is that this sandwich is only available through June, which means I'm going to be at Dunkin' even more than usual during the next month and a half...and I'm already there way more than I should be.
Evil. Evil. Evil.
I used to lift weights. I started my sophomore year in college. I can't remember exactly why, but peer pressure is probably a pretty good guess, since a few other guys on my hall had started working out that year. One of my friends and I started lifting at the same time, after some initial instruction by another one of the guys, who was an ex-football player (there was no football at my school, or else he probably would have been a current football player). The football player got us started with much-needed basic instructions and then after a week or two we "noobs" were mostly left on our own to go to the gym, where we would make fun of ourselves and others, try to pick up metal plates of varying sizes, and generally misuse a decent if unspectacular college gym for the next three years. I can still remember trying to drive the evening after the first time I lifted. I could barely move my arms to steer. It's funny to look back on, and I guess it was pretty funny at the time, too.
Along the way, my once mild-mannered friend turned into and sadistic taskmaster in the weight room. I always needed to do one more set, no matter how dead my arms were. Our goal was to leave the gym each time so tired we could barely move our arms. Of course, being college students, we would probably go back to the dorm and have beer, anyway, but I'd at least gotten started on something that I've mostly stuck with, albeit with varying degrees of success and commitment, since my first visit to the college gym in 1996.
After I graduated college and got ready to move to Philly for my first "real" job (that might be worth a blog post someday), one of my first purchases a weight bench and barbells at Play-it-Again Sports. I spent under $150, and it's largely served me well, though it was mostly used as a coat-rack or a dust collector from 2001 to mid-2004, when I'd had a gym membership (which got used less and less each year after an initial pre-wedding gotta-get-in-shape panic). When we moved to our current home in 2004, I set the weight bench back up and had done a decent job sticking with it...until January of this year, when I pretty abruptly stopped.
There. "I used to lift weights." I said it. I can no longer get away with the "I've slacked a little bit in my lifting" or "I've got to get back into the routine" type statements I've been using to reassure myself. Lifting had gotten less frequent in 2010, as I tried to on longer and longer runs, but I don't think I'd picked up a weight since the first week of January of this year. I'm sure I haven't since I hurt my knee at the end of January. That's not slacking off, it's not a slip-up in the routine. That's four months. That's stopping completely.
I started again this morning. I pretty drastically cut weight back in every set from what I'd been doing previously, but I got through it.
It's good to start again. I don't have specific goals for this, other than to just get back into a regular routine. I'm just trying to keep muscle tone, not "bulk up" or add weight that might actually hinder my running. And since it makes for very boring blogging, you probably won't hear about it again here until there's some sort of mishap, which there will be. And that feeling I told you about earlier, where I could barely drive because I couldn't move my arms? I think that's how I'm going to feel this afternoon. Ouch.
Creepy weightlifter guy...coming to a home gym near you! (not really)
I've mentioned on this blog several times my frustrations stemming from the use of my Garmin GPS watch.
At last year's Broad Street Run, a ten mile race run in excessive heat, my Garmin Forerunner 201 recorded a distance of over 11 miles. I was on the verge of casting it into the Delaware, when a fellow Garmin owner reminded me that if I'd zig-zagged to hit a lot of water stops or fire hydrants, that it could add up to considerable extra running over a 10-mile race. Since I weaved back and forth to hit EVERY fire hydrant, this made sense, and Garmin was forgiven.
At the Shamrock Marathon, Garmin was showing about a third of mile ahead of the mile markers for most of the race, and then over the course of the last five miles its accuracy seemed to decrease at it showed about 26.75 miles at the end of the race. This seemed weird, and was increasingly frustrating as I died on the wall, but my inappropriate rage at Garmin was forgotten in my relief to have finished the ordeal of the marathon. It also seems to have a lot of trouble finding satellites when I'm away from York, PA, and it completely turned into a brick when I was out of the country.
Most of the time, though, Garmin seems to work ok. Most 5Ks show up as 3.1, and its measurements usually seem consistent when I've used it on courses that I'd previously mapped out on the USATF site, mapmyrun.com, or dailymile. It's helped have at least a pretty good idea of how far I'm running on courses that I haven't previously mapped out, and it's virtual training partner feature helped me break the 24-minute mark on a 5K and will hopefully help me pace myself to a PR in the Harrisburg Mile in July.
Today, however, Garmy let me down in a new and exciting way. After my 10-mile night run on Thursday night, I was trying for 10 again today. It was a pleasant morning, but with bright sun I felt very warm, and I had the "power outage" feeling in my legs that has plagued me on and off over the last several weeks. Even so, though, I ground out the miles and was coming up to the finish, when at about 9.8 miles, as I made the final turn toward my car, Garmin started subtracting mileage.
(I don't care what you say, Garmin. I ran 10 miles today.)
I will admit, I received the Forerunner 201 as a Christmas gift from my parents, and I requested one of the lower-priced models with the thought that my parents could then afford to get one as a gift for my wife, too. I chose the 201 because I liked how the display looked and I was certain that it had the Virtual Training Partner. In hindsight, I should have gone with the 205, which promised a high-sensitivity receiver at a similar price point at the time. Or, maybe I should have realized that it was the cheapest model for a reason.
I suppose I could have gone too far the other way; a friend has one of the newer touch-screen models, and not only does it seem like a PhD in astrophysics is required to use it, he's h had trouble in cold weather when a sleeve brushes up against the touch screen. Locking it makes it tough to see the screen he wants when he wants it.
I'm not terribly surprised to see that the Forerunner 201 is a discontinued model. I'll likely milk at least a couple more years out of Garmy, but I think that when I do need a new GPS watch, I'd be wise to pay less attention to the size of the screen and more attention to the sensitivity of the receiver.
"Be careful," said my wife, Chris. "Don't do anything silly." What? Do you mean something silly like run 10 miles in an hour and 35 minutes through Manchester and Mt Wolf in the middle of the night with my goofy headlight and a bright yellow-green shirt so shiny it could wake the dead?
I've really enjoyed nighttime running lately, for a variety of reasons. First of all, I don't have to get up early. That's always a plus. Throughout the year I've not done as well at getting up to run before work in the morning. Earlier in the year, since I work from home, I could go for a run at lunch. Lately, we've finally gotten some very welcome warmer weather, but since my preferred running temperature is really 30-50 degrees, my best options are morning or the middle of the night.
But, in addition to the temperature, I enjoy the atmosphere of running at night -- the peace and quiet and the way the landscape is different from the day.
And lastly, I like the faux elite-ness it conveys upon me -- I may never qualify for Boston, but I'm the fastest one in Mt. Wolf in the middle of the night.
But I'll carry some holy water and a crucifix just in case...
I use the running website dailymile.com, a social network for runners, to track my mileage, pace, and how many donuts I've earned thus far this year, which unfortunagtely so far exceeds significantly the number of delicious donuts I've eaten this year. "Donuts Consumed" is definitely something I'll start tracking next year.
I use dailymile for its data storage and analysis, but it tries to be fun, too. Both on its own site and on its facebook page, its admins post questions or challenges, which it calls "#dailymission" for its members. Some of them are fun. For example, last week it asked users to post their least flattering running photo (which in my case, is all of them). Others are a bit more serious -- asking for opinions on the new Boston qualifying standards.
Last week, dailymile posted a question that I thought was a fun one to consider.What race would you most want to do, if you didn't have to worry about any logistics?
I thought this was an interesting question, but I needed to set the rules: "logistics" means budget, of course, as well as schedule, but also "ability level", meaning that in this thought experiment, it doesn't matter if I haven't met the qualifying standard for a race.
It was probably pretty obvious where I was going with that, and I admit that I've been getting a little bit of Boston envy. Hearing about other runners working so hard to make it to Boston, and the sense of accomplishment they feel when they qualify, it's a bit contagious. BUT, like I've said, I just don't think I have a Boston Qualifier in me. It's not that I think I can't do it -- but I think working that hard to shave well over an hour off my marathon time would turn something I've finally started to enjoy into something torturous.
A couple others that sound amazing:
The Reggae Marathon in Negril, Jamaica. Jamaica. How could it not be a blast?
The Great Wall Marathon. Wow. Nuts. Sounds really hilly, though. I've made my feelings about hills very clear.
Kona Marathon -- It's in Hawaii. That's awesome. I've never been to Hawaii. If I go there, do I really want to spend 5 hours running a marathon? (I guess you could say that about any of these.)
Athens Classic Marathon -- Supposedly the original marathon course. Every time someone runs a marathon they are, according to legend, following in the footsteps of Phidippedes, the Greek messenger who ran approximately 26 miles to bring news to Athens of the Greek victory at the battle of Marathon, and then died from the effort...reminding us that this really is a stupid idea.
All of these sound fun, and I'm sure there's hundreds more that would make for amazing adventures, just like there's thousands of places I'd like to visit if I didn't have to worry about money, vacation days, time, etc. But there's one race that stands out above the rest in my mind:
Awesome city with a thousand years of history and a great, Brian-friendly, climate for running. Not to mention there's a million pubs and they speak English better than I do. Unfortunately, not only is it on the wrong side of the Atlantic, but entrance is by lottery.
It's been fun to dream of faraway places, even though I there might be better things to do than run once I'm there, but of course time and money are huge constraints. That's ok; for now I'm pretty satisfied with the Philly Marathon in November and probably another shot at Shamrock next year.
But, if you didn't have to worry about logistics, where would you go? (Attention work: On the off-chance you read this, please note that I wrote it last night.)
I've been edging very close to being back in "I ran (X) miles in (Y:YY) in (insert borough name here) and felt great/bad/hot/awful" territory here, so instead of talking about how I ran 8 miles in 1:13 in Mt. Wolf and Manchester yesterday and felt gross, I'm going to take a moment to talk about the 5K schedule as it currently stands for the rest of the year.
One of my new year's resolutions was to run five 5Ks this year. In hindsight, that wasn't challenging enough, but I wasn't sure how the schedule would work out. In 2008, I think I ran 8. In 2009, I think I only ran two. Another resolution is to run an under-23-minute 5K. My current PR is 23:43. I hope to lower that mark during the year, whether or not I can come in under 23.
So far this year, I've got three 5K's in already:
1. Kelly Shamrock 5K -- Sunday March 13, Baltimore Md: 30:15 (One of our favorite races in Baltimore. I was tapering during it.)
2. Mud Chasers 3.5 -- Sunday April 17, Sparks Md: 38:00 (Yes, I think I'm going to count this. It's got to count for something.)
3. Northeastern High School Honor Bus Benefit 5K, Saturday April 23, Mt. Wolf PA: 24:29 (A fun new local race, and I'm really happy with my time.)
Next up:
The Preakness 5K on Saturday, May 14, in Baltimore Md. The course includes a lap around the famous horse-racing track. Hopefully no horses are on the track at the time. Since it's on a racetrack and around the grounds at Pimlico, hopefully this course is flat. I might be able to beat my PR, but if you're a betting man, don't look for me to win, place, or show.
Bob Potts 5K on Sunday, May 15, in York PA. Right after I ran Shamrock, I had designs on running on the Bob Potts Marathon. I was talked out of it by my training group coach. In hindsight, I think I could have run it. I would have had a few weeks of rest, but then have to quickly try to work my way back up to a 20 mile run, and then a short taper. At any rate, I'll probably run the 5K.
I've never done two races on back-to-back days, so this should be fun. I'll probably try to run one of them as fast as I can for PR and take the other one easy, but I'm not sure which is which. The Preakness should be flat, but it starts at 10:30 so it's got a better chance of being hot. Bob Potts is supposedly a flat, fast marathon, but I'm not familiar with the 5K course. Its starts at 8:00, so likely cooler temperatures at start, but it's also got the disadvantage of being the second out of two.
That's all I'm signed up for so far (well, I'm not even signed up for Potts, I was just going to sign up that morning), but I also plan on running the Spirit of Gettysburg, Fort McHenry Tunnel Run, and the Harrisburg Jingle Bell 5K again. I'm hoping I can break my PR before the last race of the season, but as long as I've recovered from the Philly Marathon, the Jingle Bell 5K, where it's almost guaranteed to be freezing and where I've set my two previous PRs, is my best chance to come in under 23.
In short, it should be a pretty busy 5K season, as there may be some more races I forgot or can add in there and of course the Philly Marathon in November and maybe a sprint duathlon in July. I've focused more on distance over the last three years, but lately I've rediscovered the fun of the shorter, faster-pace race and the challenge of getting to a new PR.
It's Sunday night, my least favorite time of the week. No amount of excellent TV ("The Simpsons" still comes through occasionally, "Family Guy" of course, and "Game of Thrones" and "The Borgias" are two newer favorites) can disguise the fact that the whole work week looms ahead. But this is my running blog, not my TV blog or my dislike of Sunday nights blog. I'll be sure to let you know when I start writing those.
I ran 8 miles in 1:10:10 yesterday morning, which I believe is among my fastest paces ever for that distance. If I hadn't forgotten to register for the Broad Street Run, which took place this morning, this means I probably could have easily have broken 1:30, which was my goal last year, when I wilted in the unseasonably hot morning. I started to say "when I decided to hold back", but I think it was more a matter of "couldn't go fast" than "decided not to").
But anyway...I'd planned on switching my route up a little, and taking Board Rd and Wago Rd down into Mt. Wolf, but road construction interfered with my plans. I took a different road into Mt. Wolf, but just had to run around the town to make up the miles that I would have gotten on Wago. It was nice, I found a new place to run that's very close to home and also has lots of cross streets to run on, and most of them have sidewalks.
Thus, last week's Honor Bus 5K, in addition to being a good race, introduced me to a new running locale, which I think will be helpful this spring and summer -- I'm getting sick of the neighborhood I've been running in, and I don't like to run down to Goldsboro in summer because if I get overheated I'm potentially 5 miles away from home or car or at night in any weather because the roads are so narrow.
The downside is, as the name "Mt. Wolf" implies, it's really hilly. If any York County runners read this, and you know a nice, mostly flat place for a long run, I'd love to know it. It's like Manchester is on top of one hill, Mt Wolf another, and York Haven another, so wherever I go, I have to climb and descend some steep hills. I know this is good, since almost no race will be this hilly, but I don't like putting my knee through it every single time.
At any rate, though, it was a nice run in a nice new locale, and I'm looking forward to getting some more good miles in this week.
