Back to the Blog - Setting up 2009

What's up? Okay, so it's only been since August that I updated this bitch. Mostly I was unhappy with the Seven Pillars theme, was searching for a more catchy title and was doing fuck-all for training. Also I switched jobs, had a kid, and ended up getting a second apartment near my office (more on the Bachelor Pad later).

Booze Running
Since I'm now working in BioFuels (sugar-cane ethanol for cars, cane cutting pictured above) I figured I had professional cover for putting booze in the blog title, since I've now signed up for the SP half and the Rio full (and actually got off my ass and started training) had to throw running in there, and since all my travel is to the middle of nowhere sugar-cane fields in Brazil, the stories forthwith will chronicle the intersections of these activities/locations/saturations. The pic below is of a capivara that was swimming in Lagoa de Taquaral where I do all of my mid-week runs)


Since my office is 150km (90 something miles) from home, I'll be updating the blog once or twice a week on the nights I sleep up here from the "Bachelor Pad" (yes, I need a better name for this too) which also are the night when I'll be doing intervals (mon or tues) and tempos (wed or thurs). My post-run ritual is to get a fresh fruit smoothie from these guys after every run. Tonight was fresh strawberries and pineapple blending is fresh squeezed orange juice.

Running in Brazil:
I've run about 10 races in Brazil in the past two years. Some great, and some that remind one that Brazil still has a way to go. My two favorites are the focus of the next six months of my training. I will be running the Sao Paulo Corpore Half Marathon that runs from the U-Sao Paulo campus to Parque Vila Lobos and back and is a flat fast course, well organized and usually features a number of bands along the way.

2009 Training
I am using the Ryan Hall 10 week training program that was in a 2007 edition of Runners World USA magazine. It features intervals every Tuesday, alternating moderate/hard tempo runs on Thursdays and alternating weekend long runs with "Race Simulations" that are usually 10k warm-up followed by 6-10km of race-pace + 20 seconds per km. It will be, without question, the most speedwork I have ever done but I like the alternating workouts to keep things interesting. From there I will do Pfitz 12-55 leading up to Rio. I am looking to drop my PR from 1:44 to as close to 1:35 as possible. I have a 10k at the 4:30 pace I need to hold to hit 1:35 so, in theory, it's doable. I also want to improve on my first marathon last year of 3:55 to something under 3:30 which is dropping from a 5:30 per km pace to a 5:00. Also doable (provided I drop some of the beer-calories I've conveniently stored around my gut).


Tonight's run: 2.7 km warm-up (one lap around Taquaral), 5 x 1 km intervals on 4:30 with 60 secs rest. I ran 3 last week averaging 4:33, today I averaged 4:36 but felt worse, could be due to getting about 90 minutes sleep on Sunday after the Super Bowl, or just the generally pains of getting my old ass into shape. Hard tempo on Thursday 5k on 4:30 should be interesting, I held 4:44 on the moderate 5k tempo last week so the forecast calls for lots of huffin and puffin.

Ok - that's enough for now. See you Thursday