Running Improvements since February

I think I'm becoming a running addict.. seriously. Kids that are in my Youth Group have heard me say when I first got to Winnemucca a little over a year ago, that "Running makes me angry" cause I hated the idea.. It's funny what a year will do.. but anyway, I started running just to lose weight, but now I'm up to running 3-5 days a week with distances varying from no shorter then 3 miles and up to 8 miles(which I actually will run next week, my longest run so far has been 7 miles).

I use twitter which updated my facebook status, and I tweet the results of almost every run I do. Before I had my Garmin 405cx watch I would just record the time and distance(which I measured in the beginning by driving my car around the block, and then I found mapmyrun.com thanks to my brother-in-law J.. But either way I'd like to show you the tweets from February and how they compare to the past couple of weeks.. I think the improvement is staggering, but that's just me

This is my first official 5k distance run without stopping

This is my PR(Personal Record) which I ran last tuesday

This was the first time I ran 5 miles and thought I was going to die

This is my new PR for the 5 mile

That's a almost a 9 minute improvement for both distances in just about 2 months... Man there's a lot of potential here.

I'm sorry if it seems I'm being egotistical, I'm not trying to be.. One of the main reasons I update so often is because I know that the more people that know I'm doing this means the more people that will hold me accountable, whether verbally or non-verbally. If you're annoyed with my constant updates, that's fine, I can't be offended, so hide me.. I might get annoyed if I saw so many run updates too.

Either way, thank you for holding me accountable.. Tomorrow I'll post some short term, long term and ongoing goals in my running future. ok bye.

I had an encounter with an Animorph

So as many of you know, I've been running quite regularly lately, I'm up to 3 miles 3 times a week and two longer runs for the other two days (This week it's a 5 mile run and a 7 mile run).. Last week is what I would call a complete failure to complete my running training.. I ended up only running one time and that's it.. I was pretty good at making excuses too.

So this week I decided to start anew.. to actually run all 5 times on the days that I wanted to run.. I had previously failed and crammed my runs in during the other weeks because I would never run on Monday (who knows why)... But either way, I got up Monday Morning and ran 3.1 miles, and it felt good. I think it was the first time I actually felt like a real runner. I was still really slow, but that'll be the way it is until I continue to lose the weight. I felt good.. My heart rate was right where it was supposed to be, I felt like my stride was actually "runnerish".. I don't know how else to explain it, but it was good.

So this morning I got up and changed Joshua's diaper, cause Corrie can't do it lately because of excess (pregnancy)nausea in the morning, and got dressed drank some water and headed out for my run fulling expecting a repeat of yesterday. My watch was at 20% battery, so I had to conserve and run a route that I knew was very close to 3.1 miles so I wouldn't have to continually check my distance (I get pretty OCD about it).. You can see the route if you click the link at the bottom.. If you look at the map (via the link) you'll see that at about half way through my route I turned right onto "Westmoreland Rd".. This is a main two lane paved road (I emphasize the fact that it's paved because a lot of the roads around here are just dirt and gravel). As I was running, feeling really good about the fact that I can run 3 miles without any trouble at all, listening to my "Emery" Pandora channel I saw a large bird fly over my head, pretty closely.. I said to myself, that looks like a seagull at first glance, but that's a crazy idea cause there's no seagulls in the middle of the desert. So the bird landed on the tree I was directly adjacent to and screeched, I was able to see it up close and know that it was a massive hawk..

:sidebar: My thought process when I realized it was actually a hawk;

I always loved looking for hawks when I was a kid.. You were always able to spot them in the winter in Upstate NY because all the trees lost their leaves, and hawks are large and easily noticeable. It was actually a game that my sister, my dad and me would play whenever we were driving on the highway with trees lining the road on either side for a majority of the ride, we would see who could spot the most hawks.. It was fun.. Hawks also remind me of the book series "Animorphs" where kids have the ability to turn into an animal that they touch, but they can only stay that animal for a limited time because if they "morph" for too long they become that animal. One kid morphed into a red tail hawk and forever was a hawk(unless he changed back in later books, who knows I never read too many). Also seeing the hawk reminded me of the book "My side of the Mountain" in which a kid runs away from home in the redwood forest region of the country, makes a home in a redwood tree, and then catches a Hawkling/egglet/whatever you call baby hawks, and trains it to hunt for him, and basically be his companion

:end sidebar:

Then, Suddenly amidst my reminiscing I felt something whoosh by my head and saw the hawk continue to fly over me, but closer this time. Now in the adrenaline/endorphin filled moment of running, and a hawk flying this close to me I really want to say that I felt the tail feathers of the bird come in contact with my head.. After further review and with a calmer heart rate I've come to the conclusion that what I felt was a rush of air caused by the hawk. Because if that hawk really hit me I would have known it.

So now I've realized that the hawk isn't too happy with me innocently jogging on Westmoreland Road, I looked ahead and saw that there was tree with a massive nest in it and figured that it was a protective mother.. Was the bird blind? Did it really expect a 250lb man to climb 25 feet into the air to threaten its nest, maybe if I was sub 200..

The hawk landed on the next tree and screeched and I ran past it more cautiously and turned my head to see it takeoff from the tree and start heading for me again.. this time it was definitely much closer to me, and I had to duck to avoid it as it zoomed past me while screeching to land in the next tree.. This Hawk was really mad at me.. But I continued running.. And it came at me again, this time I really picked up my pace and ran to other side of the road(in retrospect I should have done this much earlier) and got clear of the trees that contained this hawks' nest I continued my run and finished 3.1 miles in 33:23 which is about a 10:46 pace (slow, but my average lately).. I got home and told Corrie the story, Of course it was laden with over-exaggerations of how it actually attacked me and how I fended it off with my bare hands (you can't blame me, the endorphins were still pumping)

As I sat uploading my run data onto the computer I asked Corrie if she would go take a picture of the hawk, cause I was almost positive that it would still be there (I asked Corrie, not because I was afraid of the Hawk, but because she's a much better photographer then I will ever be). Alas the Hawk wasn't there, it must not have viewed Corrie as a threat or could sense that Corrie was with child and could directly relate with the Hawk on some weird level. But she did get a picture of the massive nest, which is right here. you can probably zoom it in to get a better look.

I'm going to run that way tomorrow too to see if the hawk tries to attack me again.. I bet if I got a stuffed hawk or some other type of bird of prey and put it on a long pole I could get the Hawk to attack it, but that would take too much time, but it's fun to think about what would happen..

Ok that's all I have to say about that.. What do you think about when you see a hawk? My side of the Mountain? Hawk spotting? Animorphs? Something else? I'd love to hear what you think.. check out the link to see where it all went down.. ok bye.

3.1 miles in 33:23.. I got dive bombed by a hawk 3x's too by joshmaxwellyp at Garmin Connect - Details