Brandon’s Marathon Podcast (BMP): Episode 1

Hey there everyone! This is the first episode of my podcast tracking my progress. Either listen to it here, or check it out in Itunes!!

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Catching up

So, I know I haven’t written in a few days, sorry! I am now in Virginia to do Lucia di Lammermoor with Virginia Opera in Norfolk, Virginia. That being said, we have been in rehearsals a LOT since I got here. I have, however, been running rather consistently.

Unfortunately, my Ipod Nano was messing up and I had to restore it, which basically means I lost all the info stored on it, which included my Nike+ calibration. So, the mileage of my runs has been even more questionable thn usual. I also went and got a pedometer, which I have not yet calibrated yet. That said, the run I did yesterday was an outdoor run.

I ran for 54 minutes wearing both my Nike+ and my pedometer (which I kind of guessed at the calibration). At the end of the run my Ipod said I had run 5.97 miles and my pedometer said I had run 7.5 miles! That is quite a difference!! I will recalibrate them both over the next couple of days.

Anyway, I will put the graphs for all my missed runs on the “Run Graphs” page.

Ouch

My feet hurt.

That pretty much sums up today’s run. I did continue my streak of increasingly longer and longer runs, albeit barely. Today, from about 15 minutes in, my feet started bothering me. I did keep my eyes off the clock, which came as a surprise when I hit 1 hour and the treadmill automatically went into “cool down” mode, where it drops the speed to 4 mph.

Another thing is that the treadmills I have been running on WILL NOT go for longer than 60 minutes (not including the 2 minutes for “cool down”). I tried entering 90 minutes and below and nothing. I think for my next treadmill run, I’m going to pause my Ipod workout and stop the treadmill when it hits an hour and restart it. Hopefully this will only take about 30 seconds or so.

I also discovered today the “nipple factor” in longer runs. When you are doing a long run, wearing a loose shirt, rather than a compression shirt, the shirt begins to rub your nipple raw. So I bought some New Skin rather than use medical tape or band-aids which may come off with sweat. New Skin is a “paint on” covering that acts as a bandage. Check out the fun pics of bloody nipples below.

…and going

Sorry this is a day late in getting to the blog, but I have been INSANELY busy! Anyway, my run yesterday was fantastic.

I have found that the “wall” I have been hitting comes in what I think is the first ten or so minutes. For now, this is good because I know for a fact that I have just begun and only have to get going. My hope is that I train well enough to not hit a wall in longer distances. From what I have read, it is possible to avoid if you train properly.

About the run itself; yet again, the treadmill said I went 6.66 mi while the Ipod said 6.48 mi. I managed to keep the digital display, including the clock covered until I hit 50 minutes. This, I have found is key for me in that I focus on the “road” ahead rather than how long I have been running. The problem with this, is that once I start road training, I want to know my split time for pacing reasons.

Sixer

This week has seen such great gains in my running. For the last run of the week I did what worked on my last run. NO LOOKING AT THE CLOCK. This has helped me so much. So much that I ran for an hour today and NEVER looked at the clock.

What kinda sucked is that the treadmill I was running on only lets you run for an hour and then it goes into a “cool down” cycle where it drops back to 4 mph that accounts for that weird little dip in the run graph. Oh, and the calibration STILL sucks!Ipod says 6.08 mi.while the treadmill says 6.5. Oh well!

Anyway, BIG shout out to Keith and the Girl for being my running soundtrack and keeping their shows coming. They have no idea who I am but I have been a listener of theirs since before show 100. Thanks guys!!

Cruisin’

The title kinda says it all. My run today was absolutely amazing! I was just cruising along and probably could have gone for twice as long as I did! That said, I ran for what my Ipod says was 4.68 miles, but which the treadmill said was 5 miles (that pesky calibration again!).

Anyway, I was literally cruising and it was amazing. My new shoes are WONDERFUL!!! Hopefully I will not regret upping my distance so quickly when I wake up tomorrow morning!

Four miler!!

First let me deliver the sad news that I had to get rid of my Jasairi’s (sad face). They were really killing my feet and I just felt that numbing myself to that kind of pain is not the way I want to train. So I went to the Nike Town Store here, in Manhattan and exchanged them for a gorgeous pair of Nike Air Zoom Vomero+ 2′s. Then of the “heels” of that (get it?) I ran for 4 miles today (4.08 to be exact)!

My body is definitely not used to going for that long, but I pushed, and once I hit about 20 minutes, I was cruising the rest of the way. My biggest gripe about this run is the calibration of the damn Nike+!! I love it but I probably ran much closer to 4.5 miles than 4, but once it warms up, and when I go to Virginia in two weeks, I’ll be able to do more outdoor runs and then the calibration will pick up my on-screen pace a lot!

As for the graphs I promised, they were messing with my template, so for now I have put them on the page labeled “Run Graphs” (look to the top of this page and you’ll see it).

Two-fer

I have two runs to report on for this post.

Yesterday, February 15th, was a running day and I decided to take things up a notch. It had been my usual practice to run for about 20 minutes or so, which usually amounted to about 2.3 miles. However, yesterday I decided to make it 30 minutes. I managed to get in about 3.2 miles (about 5k) and it really felt great. As a matter of fact, I felt like I could have run for a full hour.

Today, I had an audition rather early this morning. As before ALL auditions, I feel it is very important to warm up your body first. So, I reluctantly got up at 6 am, drove into downtown Boston (the audition was for Boston Lyric Opera), and went to Bally’s. It was really a very nice run, but I could really tell that it had been less than 24 hours since I had run. I only went for the usual 20 minutes, but still maintained my usual pace.