Stupid NBC, and some running

Okay, I'll get caught up on the runs in a minute.  First a little rant.  This morning were the Olympic Marathon Trials in Houston.  NBC had exclusive broadcast rights and didn't have a live feed!  Are you kidding me?!  USATF didn't work that into the contract?  Instead they did a rebroadcast at noon that is two hours long.  I've been watching and I'll at least say they're showing more running than I thought they would - I though it would be filled with a lot of human interest stories and not a whole lot of running.  But seriously, no live feed?  Thousands of us were on flotrack.com reading the live updates and twitter feeds. 

Okay that's enough of that.  Hopefully they got enough frustrated emails to change that in the future (I sent two)!  Haven't updated in a couple days but I've done three runs, capping with a 9 mile run this morning.  Looking forward to a rest day tomorrow:

01/12:
6 miles, No time
This was the same run as 01/08, just a shorter route back.  It felt much better!  It was a beautiful sunny day and I was able to just relax and enjoy the run. I had considered shortening it to 5 miles but I"m glad I did the 6.

01/13:
I finally got some new batteries for my Garmin watch and foot pod (Forerunner 50 - I'll probably write a later post on this later).  Today's run was a short 3+ miles to calibrate it.  I went down to the Adidas trail to calibrate it on the 1000 meter loop.  I ran two loops and it came in pretty close.  It was nice to have an easy day.  After two cups of coffee in the morning and a lot of meetings, it felt good to get a little running in.  Calves and shins felt tight in the evening.  Took the rolling pin to them and they loosened up.  I should probably ice them but I'm out of peas!

01/14
9 mi., 1:16, 8:23/mi
Whew!  9 miles this morning with Christy and Megan.  Megan talked the whole way, which I love!  It keeps me distracted and it's fun.  It was a cold morning.  Running with other people pushes my competitive edge so I refuse to slow down.  We were running around 8:15-8:30 which was faster than we should have been running for a long run, especially me since I'm just trying to increase mileage before my 12 week plan starts.  But I felt good most of the way.  I stopped to stretch my calves at the halfway point and the last couple miles, my hamstrings and quads were tired.  I'm glad we ran on concrete the whole way since that's what the marathon will be.  It was a good excuse to have steak for lunch!

With batteries in my Garmin, I was able to record not just pace, distance and time, but also my cadence.  Everybody is talking about cadence today, maybe too much.  I think there is something to be said just for finding what is comfortable for you within a healthy range.  I'm training in Merrell's Trail Gloves, which is a minimalist shoe.  It's been great as it forces me to run lighter on my feet which has been really good for my knees and my IT bands (struggled with ITBS in past training).  I've been trying to increase my cadence but it's helpful to be able to easily measure it (I don't want to run with a metronome or music).  I'm coming in around right around 80 rpm (160 steps/minute).  They say ideal is 90 so I'll try increasing it this week on some runs and see how it feels.