Week 9: Wharf to Wharf and back to Wharf :-)

I did the 12 miles run from Capitola to Santa Cruz board walk and back to Capitola today. It was so mind blowingly beautiful. The trail was on the coast line. So, except for the last 0.5 miles of diesel fumes from the utility vehicles at Santa Cruz board walk, the whole route was serene and inspiring. We ran close to the coast, enjoying the sunrise (albeit behind us - not infront of us), ran on concrete bridges, hanging bridges, wooden bridges, and on a railway track that was laid on a hanging wooden bridge. I am starting to enjoy the saturday long runs. There were hydration stalls spread every 3 miles. The "Gu" gel and the "Gu2O" is working well with my stomach though I don't have any complains about power gel as well. Sucked the gel every 45 minutes (with plenty of water.. man the taste is awful) and reached the destination with no pains. I got a good pace as well. 12 miles in 2 hours and 12 minutes. May be more time on treadmill in the future weeks will give me better control of the pace.

Peace out,
sai.

Week 9: Coach's workout: Splits on the trail

After the much dreaded Indian running last week, I was planning for things to get worse this week.. Not so much.. Actually it worked better.. This week, we hit the trails and started of with a 1.5 miles run at a conversation pace. That was followed by four 0.5 mile sprints (my fastest was 4 minutes). Then we did another 0.5 miles to reach the tracks. That was a total of 4 miles at my own pace. I did not have to follow any one else's pace and that made a lot of difference. Looking forward for the 12 miles run this weekend

Happily yours
sai.

Week 9: Treadmills in Cisco gym - Totally useless and utter waste!

After returning from Yosemite, I stepped up my training frequency this week. Until week 8, I was doing 4 days a week work out. From this week, I have started with 5 days a week work-out with one extra day of running. On Monday, I tried treadmill. After running outdoors, treadmill is borrrring! I did not have any motivation to run after 20 mins. So, I did some miscellaneous stuff and got out of the gym.

This new gym in Cisco is supposed to be state-of-art.. Now, I am not the one who normally holds on to old things and don't welcome new things.. But here, about the treadmills in Cisco's new gym, I have to vent out! There is no friggin' air.. All the elements on the treadmill are for namesake. There is an inbuilt fan but it doesnt give one iota of air. Because there is an inbuilt fan, there are no real fans kept near the treadmill and generally the whole gym is poorly ventilated.

What I like about treadmills, in general, is that it puts some discipline in me and I can't slack my pace. And just visually seeing my position on the track gives me the motivation to complete the lap.. But these state of art treadmills in Cisco do not have that simple graphical user interface. It has an ipod plugin and a TV built in. I have use for neither. The video distracts me from the run..and running with your neck bent down just puts extra pressure on the neck..Still worse, I tried watching ESPN and they were covering one of those car events that go round n' round.. That made me friggin' dizzzy while running! I have to struggle to use the LCD touch screen and make that disappear...

Some really demented, evil marketing guy must have passed these on as real user requirements to construct the treadmill ("From our market research, the customer wants to watch their own tv while doing the workout".. what he didn't tell is that "and oh BTW, my market research consisted of talking to my couch potato brother in law who said he may try going to the gym if the treadmills had TV on 'em "). I want one old treadmill and some real fan :-(

Not a happy camper,
Sai