Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Back in School

Well school started up again this week. Let's see, this will be my 16th consecutive semester of college, not counting summer classes. Too bad I'm still working on my bachelor's degree. I did get an associates degree in the middle there and I've just been going part time since then, but I think it is fair to say I haven't always been the best student.

The line from Tommy Boy is very fitting. Tommy says "You know a lot of people go to college for 7 years." To which Richard replies "I know, they're called doctors." Oh buddy, that's good stuff. If you haven't seen that movie you are missing out.

This semester will be pretty busy. I'm taking an artificial intelligence class and I will have a lot of work to do in there. For instance I get to build a robot that plays basketball. If you're at all interested, you can see all the rules and stuff here (pdf). At least I have a little more than three weeks to design a robot, figure out how to build it, figure out how to program it and then actually make it play basketball. And in case it didn't come through in plain text like this that was blatant sarcasm. I do think it will be fun though.

Because of all the work that I will have to do for school I'm a little worried that I will put my running on the back burner like I did last year. I am going to work really hard not to do that though. I think the goal I have of 1000 KM for the year will help keep me motivated to at least run once in awhile. Running does clear my mind too. Now if I can just figure out how to program while I'm running....

Monday, January 7, 2008

I don't get it

I'm kind of a stats junky, I just like numbers. I find different correlations interesting. I don't keep track of a lot of stats for my runs though, mostly because I'm too unorganized/lazy to do that. Mostly I just keep track of the distance I run, the time, and my average heart rate. I keep track of it all on RunningAhead.com, it is an excellent site. There are a lot of other fields that I don't worry about too much, but it would be interesting to see the correlation if I took the time to input that data for every run.

On Saturday afternoon I ran 2 miles on the treadmill at 6 miles per hour with an incline of 1 like I normally do. The run felt quite a bit harder than the last couple and my average heart rate was 163. I checked it a few times during the run and it was up close to 180. When I tried to find my max heart rate last year I came up with 184 so 180 was really up there.

Tonight I ran 2.25 miles, again at 6 MPH with an incline of 1. Except tonight I felt pretty good and kicked it up to 8 MPH for another quarter mile. My average heart rate this time was only 156. I didn't check it too often during the run though and I never really saw it higher than that.

So even though I ran farther and faster my heart rate was higher. I find that pretty interesting. Makes it easy to see why heart rate training is becoming more and more popular.

I'm trying to figure out what all went into the difference and I can't really think of anything special. Actually I would have bet that tonights run would have been "harder". Friday night was my Christmas party for work, but I didn't have as much "fun" as I did last year. I was home around 11 and I only had about 6 beers (party started at 6 so that's not as bad as it sounds). I didn't have anything going on Saturday and I just woke up around 9:30 and took a nap for about and hour or so after that (sometime around 11 I think). Then I went for my run around 2:30.

Last night I was up until about 3:30 playing Final Fantasy III on my DS (I have got to quit doing that). Went to work at 8 and skipped lunch. In the afternoon my stomach was hurting and I just felt kind of crappy. Actually it's kind of weird, that actually happens quite a bit when I hardly sleep and don't eat. I came home, ate and took a "nap" for about 3 hours. When I got up I still kind of felt like crap but I went for my run anyway. And then I had a real good run. I don't get it.

Tuesday, January 1, 2008

New Year's Resolution

Well it's that time a year again, we all make promises for the year that we will keep for a few weeks, maybe. I'm jumping on that train too.

I've been quite the slacker lately (when I say lately I mean the last few months) when it comes to running. But I'm starting up again. I'm going to keep things simple. I am going to run every other day. I want to get to a point where I run 3 miles two runs in a row then 5 miles, the two 3 mile runs again. It will be a little while before I'm to that point though. It amazes me how fast I get out of shape. Tonight I just ran 1.5 miles.

The only running goal I have set for myself this year (so far) is to run 1000 KM or 621 miles over the course of the year. There is a user group (here) on RunningAhead of people that have this same goal. It has a nice page that shows the users progress and a pace bunny that makes it easy to see if you're on pace to meet the goal.

I'm going to start posting on here again with some regularity. I'm thinking two or three times a week. Hopefully I'll stick to it better than last time I said that. My next semester will be kind of busy so we'll see how it goes.

I hope everyone has an excellent year.