I did another 18-mile run this morning and was in better running form than the last time I did a distance like this.
The first 30 minutes were a little painful. Fortunately, my running legs woke up after that and I was able to achieve a pace of between 9:20 and 9:50 minute/mile for most of the 18 miles. In particular, I forced myself to run a little faster towards the end, in order to “simulate” a strong finish.
I was also careful to drink lots at every 2 miles and took an energy gel sachet at every 6 miles. This translated to an energy gel every hour.
The best news is that my ITB did not bother me after the run. I used the foam roller before the run during warm-up and immediately after. So it looks like the combo of foam roller and physiotherapy is working.
Now, I am wondering if I should do a 20 mile run next weekend. The plan is yet another 18-miler. But perhaps doing a 20-miler followed by two 18-milers would allow more time to rest before the 22-miler in April.
In my other role as the Haas EWMBA Student Association’s Communications Committee co-chair, I help to administer a set of blogs that are hosted on blogger.com (aka blogspot).
Instead of forcing people to use special tools or (heaven forbid) HTML to create web content, we decided to use blogs. This is because blogs are targeted at average people(bloggers) who are more interested in creating content than programming in HTML.
This means that the main Haas EWMBAA webpage is a single blog. All the individual webpages of the various committees are individual blogs with different URLs e.g. “http://haasewmbaa-communications.blogspot.com/” which is the blog page for the Communications Committee.
If we had done it the traditional way, we would have had to teach people Microsoft Publisher and set up FTP accounts and all the rest of the good stuff. The advantage of that would have been a more consistent set of URLs e.g. www.haasewmbaa.com/communications
The downside would have been less content.
With that background out of the way, I have to say that setting up a blog with blogger.com is much easier than with WordPress.
For one, it is easy to set up the content on the right margins. Within minutes, I was putting up pictures of the communications committee members, pictures of Haas, links etc.
WordPress, strangely, requires you to edit HTML if you wanted to change the general look and feel of the blog.
So if you are wondering why there is no picture of the Silicon Valley Geek…
I found out today that I am improving my running speed.
Several months ago, running a single 400-meter lap in 2 minutes was a “go all out” effort.
This morning, I did some interval training. My “all out” lap time was 1 minute 40+ seconds. Wow!
Now, my goal is to achieve a consistent 8 min/mile for a 1/2 marathon distance. Well, maybe I’ll need to do that for a 10K first 
Part of the my training involves trying to run an 8 min/mile pace for more than a mile at a time. Technically, I guess you can call that my “tempo” pace.
It’s a beautiful out there this morning. I had planned to do some intervals.
But neither mind nor body are up to it. I feel and look my age this morning: all hunched up and aching.
I came back from Taiwan last Friday, had classes on Saturday and Monday and conference calls late every night.
I also caught a cold on Sunday, after the Happy Hour Run. So there’s also the effect of Nyquil and Claritin (allergy season is here as evidenced by the pollen on my car).
I guess I need a little break. Perhaps I’ll do a little run tomorrow. There’s an 18-miler for this Sunday on the training schedule.
That’s something to look forward to…