New route, or just lost!

Took the hilly lost route!This Route made me go twice as far as I intended, as I was admittedly lost.  At almost 19 km on mapmyrun.com, which is  guessing as I am not sure which roads I was actually turned around on, I was feeling  the muscle pain later on the next couple of days.  I went from an expected 45 minute run to 1.5 hours!   I actually enjoyed running in the rain, through the misty hills of Mission rural.  I am not accustomed however, to hills.  My butt was especially sore the next day.

Olympic Fever Hits Home

It just went by!This is a once in a lifetime thing, having the olympic torch relay right outside my school workplace.  It is just too exciting to pass up on writing about!

What gets me pumped is the honor it is to have such world class athletes so close to home being in the top shape of their life to reach as high as they can.  WAY TO GO!  Go Canada! 

Winter Weight Gain : A Paradigm Shift?

Stepping on the scale, I recently have been wracking my brain on the reasons for my recent weight gain.  I have fluctuated slightly over the last year, because I naturally plateaued, which is fine.  But as of late, I noticed the number slipping back up.  I noted it to my friend and my wife.  In my head though I began to recount the new snacking I have been enjoying in the evenings.  This must be the culperate.  Or the few chocolates I enjoyed over Christmas.  I beleive this is part of it.  But there is another part that I needed to face.  Its the part of my new regiment that I couldn't factor in with out another's opinion and observation. 

What my beautiful wife pointed out was that my 3-4 visits per week to the school gym for my new gym program on top of my regular runs with students may be the culporate.  DUH.   However, my thoughts are, how much is from muscle tissue?  I am in a unique situation for myself, because I have not wanted to be huge, just fit.  Will this affect my times in a negative way now?  IS it really from the workouts in the gym?  I think trusting the process has something to do with this.  I am a pretty clean snacker.  Whole grains, fruit, yogurt, milk.  These I have replaced from the old wings, chips and nachos from days of old.  Being in an unhealthy paranoia is not one of my 2010 fitness goals.

Keeping healthy and active is my life time goal.  Not paranoid.  I will continue to allow my food to be enjoyable, sensible and reflective of my activity level.  Once training for a timed event starts, so does changes in my body's needs.

This is where people might begin to roll their eyes and think, "nice problem to have".  But what I ham facing with this paradigm shift is the fact that our fitness and dietary goals and needs constantly shift and need to be re-evaluated.  I am going to need to dig deep, face the previous paradigm and rely on the facts of the new activity level I have.  I will be researching this in other's running info.  Has this happened to anyone else?

Supplimentary:
Here is an interesting article on gaining weight while training for a marathon.  Fodder for thought.  A running friend of mine feels that I need to attribute how much you need in terms of caloric intake to what you are actually doing.  It could be both increase in muscle and fat both.  Any increase effects running times, as you have more to move if you gain. 

Mid Week Winter Run Routine

Not sure what is normalout there, but I have gotten use to winter early morning runs in a way.  For Christmas I got a headlamp from Santa, so my routine has taken a couple of turns as barriers were removed! To be honest, I have allowed myself to sleep longer occasionally because in the past two winteres, I had moved my running to after work, but this was inconvenient and took away from my family time. 

*Night Before: Lay out running gear so as not to disturb my lovely sleeping beauty bride when I am looking in the dark for those STUPID TIGHTS.*

Wearing: Thermal running tights, compression Tshirt, pull over wicking sweatshirt, marathon illuminating jacket, gloves, shoes  and skull cap, headlamp.

5:30 (or 6 am depending on my schedule) - alarm goes off, turn it off, will myself to get up. "GET UP GET UP IDIOT, GO RUNNING!"

5:35 - make a quick pot of coffee, visit the bathroom

5:36 - get dressed whilst playing a couple turns of Facebook Scrabble, checking email

5:38 - pour elixer of life into my groggy brain.  Wait for effect which is immediate and amazing, play another scrabble turn.  Think about the run, make adjustments to length if weather or time is an issue.

5:40 - Step out of door and on my run for ususally 10 k - 14 k.

7 am-ish arrive home and jump into morning pre-work routine

Now, this is all good if it all goes as planned, but often somethings been washed, moved or tampered with in some way to make me run around looking for items.  You may notice I did not mention my beloved IPOD.  Well, i have given up for the most part bringing this item with me, it was just too finicky for the trouble of all I am wearing and the cold often makes the battery die quickly.  So no music, which is okay considering I am blind with darkness the whole run, so who needs to be deaf too! I run my shorter runs on an empty stomach, only coffee keeps me energized then.

So how abnormal am I?  Anyone have a similar routine??

New PR!

It just felt right.You ever had one of those days.  The sun was out, the temp was warmer and I knew if I went and applied myself I could make a PR.

New PR:

5 Km : 19:49
10 km : 41:02

This brings me so much closer to realizing my goal of a sub 40 10k.  I felt pretty tired just before the 5 km mark, but I pressed through and let up a bit adding over a minute to my second split time.  But that being said, I still rocked my previous bests.