Weekly Training Report - April 14th-20th

Monday: 8.0 miles (7:17

Tuesday: 12.5 miles (7:42)

Wednesday: 9.0 miles (7:56)
I had really tired legs for this run today.  The plan was to run a workout either today or tomorrow this week.  But, there's just no way with the way my legs are feeling.  And another long run on Saturday before I fly to Hawaii for work.  It's just taking me longer than I thought to adjust to 60 mile weeks.  I've rushed into workouts before when increasing my mileage and got injured because of it.  So, I'll just listen to my body, even though sometimes it's frustrating.

Thursday: 7.7 miles (7:46)

Friday: 7.5 miles (7:15)

Saturday: 15.2 miles (7:30)

Sunday: 6.7 miles (7:27)

I made it to Hawaii!  After flying for 10 hours, my feet and ankles were very swollen.  But, it felt good to run.  I run around diamond head, the views were amazing!

Weekly total: 66.8 miles
Best week yet, with my mileage buildup.  Still no workouts yet, and I don't know how my runs will go for the next 3 weeks while I'm in Hawaii.  Working long days and then running fast doesn't sound fun.  I want to at least shoot to keep my mileage up in the 60s while I'm here.

Weekly Training Report - April 7th-13th

Monday: 7.0 miles (7:32)

Tuesday: 6.6 miles (7:43)

Wednesday: 7.9 miles (7:34)

Thursday: 8.6 miles (7:46)

Friday: 11.5 miles (7:27)

Saturday: 6.8 miles (7:22)

Sunday: 14.0 miles (7:37)

Weekly total: 62.5 miles
No workouts this week.  Last week, the tempo run on Saturday and the long run at 7:15 pace took a toll on my legs.  And I felt my right quad start to act up.  I still wanted to hit 60 miles this week, so I traded intensity for distance.  Hopefully my legs will get more accustomed to this work load.  Next week, the plan is 60+ and a workout thrown in somewhere.

Mo Farah Tackles the Marathon - London Marathon Preview

This Sunday Mo Farah is making his marathon debut at the London Marathon.

Mo Farah is the 2012 Olympic 10,000 and 5,000 meter champion.  He also doubled in the 10,000 and 5,000 meters at the 2013 World Championships in Moscow.  To top all of that off, last year he ran the 1500 meter in 3:28:81 to break Steve Cram's 28 year old British record.  So, he's got wheels!

He's run several half marathons, including the NYC half three weeks ago where he came in second at 61:08.  And that's after he got tripped up in the middle of the race.  He also collapsed at the finish line!  His best half marathon time came last year at the Bupa Great North Run with a time of 60:10.

The London Marathon is normally a pretty fast marathon and this year, the field is stacked.  The current marathon world record holder, Wilson Kipsang, is running.  Last year's winner, Tsegaye Kebede, is also running.  The London course record holder, Emmanuel Mutai, will be there.  And, finally, Geoffrey Mutai, ran 2:03:02 in Boston in 2011.  Which is faster than the current world record, but Boston is not a world record eligible course.

With all the talent in the field, I don't think Mo will win, but I am very interested to see what his time is.  I'm going to guess he'll run 2:06:XX and break Steve Jones 29 year old British marathon record.  That seems to be his main priority, as he said "My aim is to go after the British record and see what comes with it, and to respect the distance."  If he does run somewhere in the 2:06 range, he may have an opportunity to win it.  Last year's winner, Kebede, ran 2:06:04 to win it.

He's spent some time training in Kenya, and here's what a week of training for Mo looks like:

His recovery pace is my race pace!

Mo's debut is interesting as well, because just last week, Kenenisa Bekele made his marathon debut in Paris and set the course record in 2:05:03.  Paris is not known for producing fast times, but Bekele's debut was one of the best ever.  Mo and Kenenisa are both 31, Kenenisa has been plagued by injuries the last couple of years, but it would be neat to see these two duel in the marathon.

It's also being reported that Mo will not be running with the leaders for the first half of the race, he will run with a pace group that is being paced to a 62:15 half marathon.  While the lead pack will be paced by Haile Gebrselassie to a 61:45 half.  I think this is a smart move for Mo, and hopefully, he'll have the energy to start picking off guys who fall off the lead pack.

Anyways, it should be exciting!  As exciting as a 2 hour foot race can be, anyways.  I would actually like to watch it, but the start time is for the men is 10:00 am local, which is 5:00 am EST.  By the time I wake up, it will be all over.  I'll try to catch the replay on letsrun.com.

Weekly Training Report - March 31st - April 6th

Monday: 8.5 miles (7:36)

Tuesday: 13.1 miles (7:40)
Medium long run in the middle of the day.  I started at 10:30, and it got really hot before I finished.  I'm not looking forward to summer!

Wednesday: 7.5 miles (7:40)
My legs felt pretty dead from the day before.

Thursday: 6.4 miles (7:52)
I ate too much at Azteca and still had to get my run in.  This was a tough one lol.

Friday: 7.1 miles (7:27)

Saturday: 7.6 miles (6:46)
10 min warm up, 30 min tempo workout @ 6:15 pace, 10 min cool down

Sunday: 15.0 miles (7:16)

I didn't get myself up in the morning to go with the Winter Park group.  So, this run was by myself at night.  I surprised myself with this run.  I felt like 7:30-7:40 would be a good pace, but I felt good so I went with it.

Weekly total: 65.2 miles
Over 60 miles this week, it's what I wanted, but it's a pretty big jump from last week (13 miles).  I only had 1 workout during the week, and I may continue doing only 1 workout (or 0) until my legs get accustomed to the mileage.

Storm the Campus 10 miler - Race Report

Last Sunday I ran the Storm the Campus 10 miler on the UCF campus.  It was a relatively small race, I think there were a little over 200 runners.  It was put on by the Sports Business Club at UCF, and I think they did a really great job!

I've never ran 10 miles before.  So, number one, that's an instant PR.  But, it also presents a slight problem, I didn't really know how to pace myself for this run.  I ran the OUC half with a pace of 6:17/mile in December, and in March I ran the Winter Park 10k with a pace of 6:00/mile.  I knew I wouldn't be able to hold a 6:00/mile pace for a 10 mile race, but I figured I could do something in between... so about 6:10/mile.  I figured I would start off at somewhere between 6:15-6:20 and see how I felt.

I saw Paula and Michelle before the race, and met their friend Tyler.  Michelle and Tyler had also never ran a 10 mile race, so we congratulated each other on our PRs before the race started.  And, it turned out Paula ran a new PR by 14 minutes!  Wow!

They told us beforehand that this course would have a lot of twists and turns, so to look for the volunteers giving directions and posted signs.  They were right, it was all over the place!  But, a credit to the race organizers, there was never really a time where I didn't know where to go.  But, I did kinda feel like this while running:

The campus is nice to run around, but 10 miles may be a little too much.  Maybe a 5 mile course with 2 loops would be better.

Anyways, once we started, one guy bolted to the front and that was pretty much the last I saw of him except for the turnarounds.  And each time, he had put more distance between us.  So, catching him was not really an option.  But, I ran the first 2 miles in ~6:17 pace and then for the rest of the race, most of my mile splits were under 6:10.  Except mile 8, which I split in 6:27.  I'm not sure what happened there, we were running into a headwind for virtually the whole mile.  And, at that point, I think I was just ready for the race to be over, and I was mentally struggling with the fact that I had 2+ miles to go.  But, once I turned onto the road going out to the stadium, passing mile marker 8, the wind wasn't so bad and it was cool to run around the stadium.

I was in second place for virtually the whole race, but one guy was with me from about mile 2 on.  At about that point, we also dropped the girl in the lead.  So, it was just us two.  He seemed content to just hang back and let me do the work.  But, sometimes he came up beside me and ran side by side with me... especially near the end.  I wish he would have done that earlier.  It's much easier mentally to run with someone stride for stride, rather than having someone drafting off of you.  After we rounded the stadium, we had about a tenth of mile to the finish at the CFE Arena.  I tried to hold him off, but he out kicked me at the end for second place.

I ended up finishing third overall in 1:01:09, that's about 6:07 pace.  If I could hold that pace for another 3.1 miles, I would break 1:20 for a half marathon.  I don't have the fitness for that right now though.  The winner ran a little over 58:00.  So, he thoroughly kicked our butts.  Maybe next year, I can make it my goal to break an hour at this race.  This was the inaugural race, and the medal was a big shiny U.  They are going to do a C for next year's medal and then an F for the year after that.  So, I'll have to at least run this race for the next two years to complete my UCF medal set.  Which won't be hard to do, I enjoyed the race, and I think they did a fantastic job for their first time!  I only see it getting better as they get more experience under their belts.

This is probably my last race until the Track Shack race series starts up again at the end of August.  Unless I do the Fishstock 5k in New Smyrna.  I've done that 5k for the last 4 years with my Dad and some of my sisters.  But, I don't know if it's going to happen this year.

So, my goal for the next few months is to build up a bigger running base.  Hopefully, getting to the point where I'm consistently running 70-80 miles a week.

So, that's about it.  Here are my splits for the race:

Jiu Jitsu Belt Test - Blue Belt

This past Saturday was my blue belt test at Gracie Barra Orlando.  I've had the blue belt techniques sheet for awhile now, but I didn't look at it too much until a couple days before.  I was a little nervous going into it, but just reminded myself that I wouldn't be taking this test in the first place if my instructors didn't think I was ready for my blue belt.  I've been training at Gracie Barra since August 2012, so it's taken me about 1 1/2 years to get to this point.  I think that's about average.

The belt tests at Gracie Barra are actually pretty low key.  Of course, I still get nervous because I'm performing my techniques in front of black belts like Marcio Simas, Gutty Muggiati, Igor Andrade, and Rodrigo Lango.  It's much different than the belt tests at the CMA karate school I went to, those tests HURT.  An hour plus of cardio, sparring, takedowns and some katas thrown in.  I definitely like the jiu jitsu tests better.  I think it shows the difference between the two martial arts.  If your technique isn't up to par for jiu jitsu, you won't be in the test to begin with.  As for karate, my kicks never looked better than white belt kicks, but I kept advancing... you just had to suffer through a test first.

Back to the day of the test.  I got to the gym about 45 minutes early and Mike, from the Oviedo location, was already there.  It was great to see him, and since he was testing for his blue belt also, we decided to be partners for the test.  We went upstairs to go over and drill anything from the list of techniques that we had questions about.  I guess our instructor, Steven, had gone over the list with Mike the day before because he knew most of the moves.  That was awesome, because once I saw the move again, I knew what to do.  I just didn't know some of them by the name on the paper.

The test itself got started about half an hour late (brazilian time).  We went through a light warmup and then we were split up into groups.  Rodrigo ran the blue belt test.  We started with takedowns, sweeps, submissions and then defenses.  Rodrigo would call out a technique and we would take turns performing the techniques on our partners.  We just went down the list and before I knew it, we were done!  It took about half an hour and the green belt test was still going on for another 10 minutes or so after our test.  At the end, Rodrigo played a joke on us, he said we had one last technique to perform, "Jump guard, take your opponents back and transition to a reverse omoplata."  He looked serious!  And, I looked around at the other partners and people looked confused but they were jumping guard!  So, I jumped guard on Mike and just sat there for a couple seconds thinking about what to do next.  Mike told me Rodrigo was laughing, and I'm just thinking "Thank God!  Because I had no idea what he was talking about!"

We aren't napping in this picture, we're warming up.  I swear!

That was about it.  After all the other belt tests finished, we lined up and got our new belts tied around our waists by Gutty.  There were no blue belts testing for purple, but there were 2 purple belts testing for brown, and one brown belt testing for black.  That was really cool to see him get his black belt.  That's another reason I like belt tests, I get to see people getting to where I want to be one day.  You can remind yourself that it is attainable!

After the test, we lined up on two sides to form a guantlet for the new black belt, Marcio.  As he walked down it, we hit him with our belts.  Some guys were really smacking him, it sounded painful!  Then at the end, we all gathered for a group picture.

So, now I'm officially a blue belt.  I've got a mixture of feelings about it, on the one hand, I'm happy to advance and I look forward to start working on the stripes for my blue belt.  On the other hand, are my self doubts... am I really good enough to be a blue belt?  What if a white belt taps me at the gym?  I feel like there's some pressure to perform, and I'm sure that will only increase as my rank increases.  Overall, though, I'm really excited and ready to keep training.

Thanks to my instructors at Gracie Barra Oviedo:  Anthony, Todd and Steven.  They are the best!  I feel like their attention to detail and technique is amazing, and I'm always learning something new.  Even if it's just a half guard sweep, there'll be some little detail they'll point out that I never saw before.  And, thanks to all my GBO Oviedo black sheep training partners, you guys make the gym worth coming to.  It's a fun place, the camaraderie is great, and I love training there with you guys!