Things are going well, not much new to report from these two week, Phase 1 is almost done. I've been doing some night running and it turns out that Las Vegas is not a barren lifeless desert.

Glad I wasn't doing a barefoot run with this guy.

Each time I looked left, my headlight would reflect off the guardrail (lower lights) and the eyes of a group of coyotes (upper lights).

I'm currently doing my Week 12 testing before moving on to Phase 2, can't wait!

It's been awhile since I've put in an update. I'm into week 10 of phase 1 from The Cool Impossible and all is going well. I'll have more about weeks 9 and 10 later on but for now I just want to focus on the end of week 8. It appeared to be another recovery week, so I did not expect any challenges to arise, but lo and behold one did. It was more mental than physical, but it's really helped energize me in these subsequent weeks. It was on the last day, time for my long slow run. Fortunately it only needed to be about 90 minutes. It was a fairly busy day but I thought I'd have no trouble squeezing it in.

5:30 - 8:00 am - Wake up, drive over to my parents' house and take them to the airport.

8:00 am - Noon - Get home in time for my wife to get to her Krav Maga class. Install ceiling fans in my kids' bedrooms.

Noon - 3:30 pm - Get the kids some lunch, whole family goes to the park.

3:30 - 6 pm - My window to get the run in? Not this time, my wife is on call and has to go in to work for a few hours.

6:00 - 10 pm - Dinner date with my wife who fortunately got back in time. Not going to miss out on a date with my wife.

10:00 - 10:30 pm - Back home. Wife takes the babysitter home. I realize that we are out of milk and other essentials for the upcoming week, plus the car is low on fuel (and it uses compressed natural gas, so I can only go to a few stations).

10:30 pm - 1 am - Hit the store and the gas station. Starting to slow down, getting a little tired

1:00 - 1:15 am - Lie down in bed.

Maybe I can do it tomorrow.

It's a recovery week, maybe I can just skip this run.

1:30 - 3:00 am - Ran.

So, maybe after being up for 20 hours it wasn't my greatest run, but I got up and did it. 

Another entry in my ongoing journey through Coach Eric's Cool Impossible Foundation Program. Weeks 6 and 7 were a little challenging given that my family summer vacation fell in the middle of it. I managed to complete week 6, but week 7 got a little derailed so I just started it over when I got back. I did manage a little bit of cross training pushing my kids in the triple stroller around Disneyland, the San Diego Zoo, Sea World, and Legoland over an 8 day period. For some reason the stroller was much lighter when I bought it 3 years ago.

I also was able to get in a nice beach run, an odd and refreshing experience for someone from the desert.

Of course when I got back, things couldn't be easy could they? I've faced smoke and ash from the giant forest fire in week 1, followed by the brutal Las Vegas summer heat, and now, of course, a flash flood that washed several inches of slick mud all over our neighborhood. Who knew I'd need to bust out my trail shoes just to go down the street?

Anyways, those two weeks are in the bag. It's been cool to see how my running and ability to run has changed during these first 2 months of the program. While I am by no means close to being able to run and ultra today, I am at last feeling that it is something I will be able to do. I've even started openly admitting to my friends and family that it is something I want to achieve (they are great and wonderful and supportive, but now I'm kinda committed).

Look like Week 8 is a recovery week, that'll let me get back into the flow of work and my kids starting their new school year. Then the final push to finish Phase 1. I really can't wait to retest and start Phase 2.

Now for the ephemera.

I recently found out that the creator of a comic series I love (The Oatmeal) does ultra marathons. He even made a comic about why he does it.

The Terrible and Wonderful Reasons Why I Run Long Distances

And in completely unrelated to running but proud poppa news, here is my 5 year old daughter showing me how brave and strong she is.

     I overcame my inner slacker and kept on the program. It helped a lot that week four seemed to be a bit of a recovery week. Week five definitely was not a recovery week, with some sprinting and hills thrown in the mix, but as I've said before, after working on staying in a lower heart rate zone for a majority of the runs up to this point, I found myself looking forward to these runs where I could let my heart race. Speaking of heart rates I was shocked to see that my resting rate had dropped to 48 just before my long run on Saturday. At first I thought my monitor was broken.

     We've had a pretty mild summer for Las Vegas after our initial heat wave early in July (meaning it only gets up to about 104 instead of 117). It doesn't make daytime runs that much more pleasant, but the nights and mornings have been beautiful.

     I changed my route for my long run and wound up in the middle of nowhere north of Vegas.

     You never know what you'll find out here. I'm sure this big empty structure has some purpose, but I've started calling it the Zombie Pen.

 On to week six. The next two weeks are going to be a bit challenging simply because we have our family vacation coming up and I'm going to need to be creative to get my running in. Worse case scenario I just repeat these weeks if I feel that I didn't accomplish what I needed to.

In week one I had to battle the air quality from the forest fire, week two brought on the challenge of my heart rate vs the Las Vegas summer heat, this week a new challenger arose - my inner slacker. I had to force myself to get out running and to do the upper and lower body circuits. Of course, once I got started I was glad I did, but the time leading up to it all the usual excuses came up - I was tired from work, worn down from wrangling the kids, it's too early, it's too late, it's too hot, I'm still sore from the last run, and so on. Not that any of those were untrue, but I've come to accept that short of winning the lottery and finding a fountain of youth, I'm going to be dealing with most of those issues every day. So I ran.

This week also brings about the end of my 20 day sugar detox. Much like running this last week, it was something I almost didn't do at first. Now that it's at an end I can't recommend enough that everyone give it a try. The biggest benefit I've found is being so much more aware of all the extra sugar added to everyday foods. I used to only think about sugar in junk food, and figured regulating my intake of candy bars and other snacks would be enough. Little did I know how much was added to foods I never even considered to be sweet. I'll be glad to add a little more variety to my foods and have the occasional snack (hello chocolate milk recovery drink), but I won't be going back to my previous diet.

All right! Week two is in the bag, and no smoke or ash was in the air. I'm finding that one of the most challenging aspect of the program so far is keeping my heart rate down. Trying to stay in my heart rate zone 2 while still running can be a challenge. I know part of this is my conditioning (or lack thereof) but I also can blame the heat here in Las Vegas. I was able to go farther and faster on my long run in week 2 while staying in HRZ 2 compared to the previous week. Most of that is probably due to the fact that it was 90 F in week 2 and 100 F in week 1. I'm also noticing the terrain and my breathing pattern seem to have some influence as well. 

The plus side to all this is that when running in HRZ 2 it seems like I can go on forever, which is a great feeling. I also found that I look forward to the interval training sections where I can run fast and not have to monitor my heart rate. Before I started this I thought those would be the parts that I dreaded. Go figure.

Not much scenery here on the north end of Las Vegas, but I did have a decent view at the top of my hill run.

I've been running on my own without much direction for the last several years. I haven't made much progress, and honestly had no real reason to. However I recently did a Ragnar with a group of friends. It was fun, but I saw that I had room for a lot of improvement. So after reading The Cool Impossible I was very excited to get started. I did the test phase, and then the following week strapped on my heart rate monitor and went outside to discover that there was a massive forest fire just outside of Las Vegas. I was still able to finish the week but had to sneak my runs in at different times depending on if the smoke was blowing our way or not. (I did not want to switch my mantra to "cough, choke, wheeze.") I'm enjoying my day off and looking forward to week two. The fire is contained and I'll only have to deal with the summer heat now.

-The view of Mt. Charleston (aka Mt. Doom) from my house.