I wear shorts — period

At the same time as I laugh at my sisters, brothers-in-law, nieces and nephew for driving great distances to find running and cycling trails, I have no problem making a 132-mile round trip to get in a long run. If Fort Collins is going to be 15-20 degrees warmer with a third as much wind, I see nothing wrong with putting the mileage on my car.

Besides, days like these illustrate perfectly why I live here. The closer you get to the mountains, the more of the wind gets blocked, the more the sun can warm you and your surroundings. Without an alarm I woke up at 7:15 a.m. and headed south shortly thereafter. On Friday, I spent a little time at work researching the thriving (based on the number of people I saw today) Fort C running scene, and found the Spring Creek Trail. It runs south of downtown along a dribbling little creek that feeds the Poudre River, starting at Cottonwood Glen Park at the end of Overland Trail. I drove down and found the place perfectly. A couple of ladies directed me to the start of the trail and away I went.

First of all, let me explain why I pushed the first long run of this training cycle to Saturday, and the three-mile pace run to Sunday. I think most training plans are fluid, and some "real-world" adjustments are entirely appropriate. When I saw that it was going to be nice on Saturday, not so much on Sunday, I figured I'd move things around — especially when I saw Fort Collins was supposed to be 50 and sunny with light winds.

I'll spare you the gory details of the run. Because I tried to run on the grass, gravel and dirt instead of the concrete, my wobbly strides pushed my right foot into my left calf a few times, rubbing some hair off that part of my leg. I saw every kind of neighborhood, from sprawling one-story ranches to massive cookie-cutter tracts on cul-de-sacs to trailers to duplexes to dilapidated off-campus ghetto near Colorado State. As I said before, the trail wasn't packed but when I approached any Fort Collins' parks I definitely wasn't alone. Better still, about 90 percent of the people out there offered some sort of greeting — a wave, a nod, a "good morning." That never happened on the Duck Creek Trail in Davenport.

What's more is my heart rate stayed somewhat reasonable. Where my heart raced in the past month in Laramie, averaging nearly in the mid-90-percent range of my max, today's 2-hour, 3-minute jaunt kept me at 90 percent (avg 167, max 177), and I didn't go over 170 until the second half of the run. Bear in mind Fort C is more than 2,000 feet lower than Laramie and I could feel my body drinking up the extra oxygen (such as it was) like a desert-stranded vagabond. Perhaps with all this extra oxygen my body just worked more efficiently today, giving me a new batch of hope for the rest of the spring.

And I wore shorts. When I left Laramie I guessed the temperature to be in the low 20s. When I arrived in Fort C the first couple of runners I saw were in shorts and long sleeves. I figured I'd warm up plenty so I left the wind pants in the car. Couldn't have been a better move. My legs are stark white but their muscular. And they gained a little color today — which I will promptly lose over the next couple of months, until I can expose them to the world again.

As of this writing I don't know how far I went. I followed a proscribed 12-mile route I stole from MapMyRun and went a little farther. Out for an hour, back for an hour. Killed the outside muscles of my thighs in the process. Tomorrow I'll do the 3-mile pace run; wouldn't it be wise to know how it feels to run race pace with tired legs? Thought so. Back to the dreadmill I go.

The vagaries of the heart

Admit it. You thought I was going to write some overwraught screed about love and the human condition. That makes one of us.

No, I've put my heart under a bit of scrutiny with this latest bout of training. About a year ago, with my 2007 REI dividend I bought a Polar RS200 heart rate monitor to tell me what my heart's doing while I destroy the rest of my body. Interesting stuff. There's this baseline test you're supposed to take with it, which I didn't do because I wanted to get at it. And I thought I knew everything. Maximum heart rate = 220-age. The manual says otherwise, that Polar's test is more accurate. And I'm wondering if that's the case.

For example, last night I hit the bike trainer for an hour-and-a-half, watching St. Croix Half-Iron 2005 and Ironman New Zealand 2005 (you'll get to know my VHS collection well if you stay with me for a while) while killing my hearing with another one of my self-labeled cool playlists. I don't think that has anything to do with what my heart does during the course of a workout, but at some point I'll investigate a possible cause-and-effect relationship. Moving forward...

The max heart rate was 157, and the average was 142. In fact, I've averaged 20 beats higher on any of my runs than any of my rides. At times I was working pretty hard last night. What I do is this: Keep it on the small ring with a high turnover while the race is going on, but shift into bigger gears when commercials come on, then back down when commercials end. Some shows have longer commercial breaks than others, but that's the nature of a real bike ride or the bike portion of a triathlon. Sometimes you've got to put the hammer down at unfamiliar intervals, which is what I try to do during these winter training sessions.

Now, I just had this thought that perhaps the scenery at Half Acre Gym, where I do my running, adds a few beats to my pulse. Not a chance. There's some nice scenery in these races I've taped , too, and I'm not talking about the sky-blue Caribbean waters of Christensted or the soaring mountains around Lake Taupo. Stuff like that doesn't get to me. I'm a pretty cool customer in such situations, so let's just eliminate this factor now.

Again, the question remains. Why is my heart rate that much higher when I run than when I ride? And will this continue to be the case when I move my training from my living room and Half Acre to the roads of Albany County?

Ah yeah, the playlist. My favorite part of this whole ordeal:

"Cochise," Audioslave
"Ignition," Brian Setzer's '68 Comeback Special
"Baton Rouge," The Nixons
"I Ain't Goin' Out Like That," Cypress Hill
"Click Click Boom," Saliva
"Mr. Brownstone," Guns n Roses
"Serpent Boy," (hed)pe
"Headspace," Velvet Revolver
"The Distance," Cake
"Feel Like I Wanna Feel," The Bella Fays
"Greater Than/Less Than," Saliva
"Roll Right," Rage Against the Machine
"A Song for Sassy Baxter," Hollywood Superstars
"Heart Attack Man," Beastie Boys
"Bring the Noise," Public Enemey
"Warped," Red Hot Chili Peppers
"Jimmy Olsen's Blues," Spin Doctors
"I Make My Own Rules," LL Cool J feat. Flea, Chad Smith and Dave Navarro
"I Come From the Water," The Toadies
"Business as Usual," Blues Traveler
"My Wave," Soundgarden
"The Only Way to Be," Save Ferris
"Can't Get Enough of You Baby," Smash Mouth

Higher math fails me

With temperatures in the single digits and winds deep into double digits, I did the speed workout on the track inside at Half Acre. It's an elevated wooden thing above the basketball courts, combining two of my favorite things: running and pickup basketball. Granted, I didn't play but I love to watch the dynamics on a court.

The workout was called Yasso 800s. They're named for an editor at Runner's World named Bart Yasso, who figured a runner could get a little bit of a speed workout while training for a marathon in a simple way. Take your goal time and extrapolate it for a half-mile or 800 meters (the difference is 4.75 meters. Sue me). For example, my goal time is 3 hours, 15 minutes so I'd do my Yasso 800s in 3 minutes, 15 seconds.

Today I warmed up for 10 minutes, took an energy gel and some water, then did each with about four minutes of walking and light jogging between. Then I cooled down for 10 minutes and stretched on the mats at the scenery fest downstairs. The times were 3:07, 3:27 and 3:16, though it didn't feel like I was running that fast. Here's where the higher math fails me, and where someone better at this than I can step in.

The sign on the wall said

Lane 1: 11.5 laps to the mile.
Lane 2: 11 laps to the mile.
Lane 3: 10.5 laps to the mile.
Lane 4: 10 laps to the mile.

Naturally, the lanes weren't labeled. But I figured since the distance around the track is shorter on the inside lane, it would take more laps to equal a mile in that lane, less in the outside. The faster the runner, the farther outside they're supposed to run, so I stayed in the outside lane and ran five laps for each alleged half-mile. Again, I'm skeptical that I did them right because those times are way too fast for my current level of fitness.

Note the bolded part. Was that assumption wrong?

I ditched the iPod for the meat of the workout because I didn't think I could run fast with the thing in. I was right. So no playlist.

And so it begins...

Contrary to my musing yesterday, today my marathon training truly began. It was a four-mile run on the treadmill amid the scenery of UW's Half Acre Gymnasium. Took me 35 minutes, 1 second. That's an average of around 8:45 a mile. As I said in the wake of yesterday's aborted workout, you've got to start somewhere.

I hate running indoors but I hate freezing the cilia of my lungs even more. Weather.com said it was 2 below zero when I left the office at 4:30 for the workout. Call me whatever you want, just don't call me a frozen-lunged fool.

And if anyone out there in blog land has an idea of how to post a spreadsheet, I'm all ears. Or eyes, as it were. I was thinking of posting my training plan.

The music: Part of 1 hour workout C. I succeeded in yanking the iPod out of the little slot on the treadmill and on to the floor at 7 mph. Thank goodness for iPod cases.

Up for the Down Stroke, Parliament Funkadelic
Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin), Sly and the Family Stone
Voodoo Chile (Slight Return), Jimi Hendrix
Ponte De Lanca Africano (Umbabarauma), Jorge Ben
El Paso, Old 97s
My Wave, Soundgarden
Jimmy Olsen's Blues, Spin Doctors
Woman, Wolfmother
Closer to the Heart, Rush

Inauspicious beginning

With every intention of striding through about eight miles I headed out the door around 8:30 this morning. There was a thin layer of snow on the ground but I thought nothing of it. When you run high school track in Minnesota you accept snow as a way of life, not an impediment.

Until I lost my feet.

What I failed to mention about the thin later of snow is that the salt trucks hadn't been out yet. So within my first few strides I slipped once, then regained footing and went on. The second time I slipped I felt my hamstring stretch unnecessarily. That's when I turned around and headed home.

My hammy is fine, but the workout lasted about three minutes. No way I was putting myself at risk in that way. At the same time I needed to run and feel good about my fitness. Tomorrow's a four-miler I'll do on the treadmill at Half Acre Gym and Tuesday's some speedwork ("speed" being a relative term). My goals for the St. Louis Marathon get more and more realistic every day.

On the eve

The St. Louis Marathon training starts Monday. With a swim.

No, I fixed it. The plan I set up originally called for swims on Mondays, bike rides on Wednesdays, and runs the other five days. It seemed rather odd for a training program for a marathon to start with a swim, so I shifted a four-mile run to Monday. Now, the only thing is to find a four-mile route without getting in my car and driving around. Yes, MapMyRun.com kicks some serious posterior (Blatant plug! Blatant plug!).

I go two weeks between posts and my loyal readers start fiending like heroin addicts. Or maybe not. I'll piddle away some bandwith talking about today's workout, a 1-hour, 15-minute ride on the trainer in front of Ironman Hawaii 2005. My heart rate topped out at 168, though I admit I didn't push too hard. Still, the average (which I neglected to record on the spreadsheet that houses my plan) was about 20 points lower than any run so far. Any reason my heart would work that much easier on the bike than on the run? It's the same thin air, the same battered body, the same stressed-out lungs. Different exercise, but still, I'd love for my runs to feel as easy as my ride today.

The playlist for the ride was "1:15 workout A." iTunes tells me this is 1:15:56 worth of music. That doesn't change the fact that I still knocked off at 1:15:30. Yes, I'm stuck in the 90s. Has there been an era of music that possessed and gave away so much energy? No. Perfect for working out.

Cherub Rock, Smashing Pumpkins.

Elevation, U2

Santa Monica, Everclear

Mountain Song, Jane's Addiction.

Alive and Kicking, Simple Minds.

Wanted Dead or Alive, Bon Jovi.

Here in Your Bedroom, Goldfinger.

You Get What You Give, New Radicals.

Can't Find My Way Home, Blind Faith.

Hot Pants (I'm Coming, Coming), James Brown.

Cult of Personality, Living Colour.

Put a Lid on It, Squirrel Nut Zippers.

Knife Party, Deftones.

Learn to Fly, Foo Fighters.

Gimme That, The Resource feat. Jimmy Napes.

Tom Sawyer, Rush

Wicked Garden, Stone Temple Pilots.

Let's Rock, Smash Mouth.

If I Run, Semisonic.

Week 2, or thereabout

With no internet at home (and with an overriding sense of duty for my time at work), I post only from the library. So you get a week's worth of musings at once. Highlight of the week was getting running shoes via UPS (thanks Mom!), which I laced up and broke in on Thursday. I ran for 32 minutes, up and down Fourth Street, a distance of 3.4 miles that felt like about 6. A week ago it would have felt like 12 so I think I'm making progress.

Then it was on to a couple of firsts. On Friday I swam for the first time since Oct. 26. That swim was a triathlon in Tempe, Ariz. This time I hopped into Half Acre Pool at UW, which, surprisingly, was nice and cool for swimming laps. I did 1,000 yards, which is not that much though it felt like I was breathing through cellophane and my shoulders throbbed later in the day. Just like the beginning of swim season.

On Saturday I rode my bike for an hour in front of the 2004 Ironman Wisconsin broadcast from OLN (the network known now as Versus). Sometimes I wonder if we're too wired in to truly enjoy being fit in and of itself, and my preparations for 1 hour, 2 minutes, 10 seconds of riding seem to bear this out. There was the videotape, the iPod and the heart rate monitor.  All I needed was the cell phone next to the indoor trainer and I'd have been the consummate 21st-century athlete. Of course, answering it is quite another level.

The HRM gave me some interesting date, though I'm not sure what I can do with it. My average heart rate was 152, max of 171 (which is 92 percent of the 195 that is my drop-dead maximum). The manual says 129-147 is aerobic Zone 1, which is supposed to be ridiculously easy, like an easy jog or spinning your pedals on the small chainring. Not me. I spent 15:14 in Zone 1 and 43:37 above that. And I burned 800 calories. All this from my little watch and chest strap. Again, the next step is to figure out what to do with it.

Tomorrow I'm heading to Boulder to run without wind and see a friend. The goal is to not walk at all, something I can't seem to do since I've been here on the high plains. Sure wish I had a little more oxygen.

Run below zero

End of week  one of the plan... mediocre to say the least. It's easy to run when you're in, oh, I don't know, Georgia, and the weather is at least tolerable. And then you return to the tundra of the high plains (no, no need to remind me I chose to live here).

I ran four of the seven days I was in the ATL for Christmas, including on the Sunday after Christmas with my brother-in-law Kevin and my nephew Ryan. Kevin has finished two Ironmans and a bunch of marathons with a PR in the neighborhood of 3:32. Ryan is 12 and has a 22-minute 5K. As I later found out, after covering 3.5 miles in 26 minutes (7.42.6/mile, if you were wondering), Ryan doesn't understand the concept of running with people. He stayed about 10 yards ahead the whole time, and my efforts to bring him back failed miserably. To put it another way, that little shit tried going Prefontaine on us.

I was reminded of a scene from the Pre movie that starred Jared Leto. In this scene Pre is blowing his teammates away in practice when a teammate pulls up alongside him and says, "Hey, there's no racing in practice." Pre replies, "Then don't race me."

Anyway, I've run twice since my return to the high plains. The first time was on New Year's Day and the second was today. Hmmm... not sure I can call them runs. I went out the door in running clothes and moved for 34 minutes on New Year's Day, followed by an hour and 20 minutes today. Both times I stumbled over to the Laramie River Greenbelt, a nice enough place to run. On New Year's Day I struggled with the wind, lungs and cold, but today I just struggled with the cold and my own lungs. Per the NOAA Web site it was about 4 degrees with a slight breeze when I ran today, and ice formed on my eyelashes and eyebrows. That's a new one for me.

At this point I hope it gets easier soon. Seriously, it was hard enough to breathe the cold air by itself, and then add the polypropylene baclava I wear over my face to warm said air — not fun by any stretch. To put things in perspective, I have an 18-mile run in five weeks and today I struggled through roughly six. 

When I lived in Cheyenne, I'd say it took a month of regular workouts before I was used to the altitude (1,000 feet lower than Laramie), but it doesn't change the fact that I wish I could breeze through these base-building runs. I already feel like I'm cramming for a midterm the night before.