Weekly Amount:
Running = 17.5 miles
Biking = 60 miles
Swimming = 4000 M or 2.5 miles
Total Amount: 80 miles
Overall Amount:
Running = 203.5 miles (38.5 miles to Las Vegas)
Biking = 652 miles (321 miles to Seattle)
Swimming = 57,200 meters or 36.7 miles (.1 miles to Los Angeles)
Total = 892 miles (81 miles to Seattle)
On a nice Saturday day, I decided to call up my brother to see if he wanted to go for a bike ride and he said, “Absolutely.” So, we met up and looked up bike trails in our area on Google Maps. We found tons of different trails in our area, so we went to the closest one. Turns out Google Maps “sucks” when it comes to planning out bike trail routes. We went to three different ones and all of them were innaccessible. But, we traveled from one to the next until we finally found one . . . The Pacific Electric Bike Trail.
The Pacific Electric Trail is supposed to be able to connect Rialto to Claremont; however, the trail is not complete. According to www.socaltrailriders.org, the trail should be completed in 2011. But we got on the trail somewhere in Rancho Cucamonga and headed west. The trail was a really easy ride with virtually no hills. The only problem for me was that you had to wait at a signal every time the trail crossed paths with a street, which was quite often.
But we reached a dead end where some construction was going on, so we turned around and headed east for quite a ways until the trail ended in I believe Fontana. It was a very pleasant ride until we encountered some dangling electrical lines. Fortunately, my brother was there to snap a quick picture of the event.
If only I had seen that sign beforehand.
I had a really nice time with my brother traveling down the Pacific Electric Bike Trail. It will be interesting when they complete that trail, but I love Claremont and the Upland area and it would be great to just hang out there from time to time and take a nice bike ride along a pleasant trail.
Recently, completer of 14 marathons and our uncle, Steve Jaros wrote an article entitled, “How to Cure Runner’s Knee.” We asked him to write this article because after running my first half-marathon, my knee’s were killing me. I knew that I would have to do something to insure that a similar situation didn’t arise again in the future.
I want to highlight the tips that he recommended so that it will help to reinforce myself in becoming a more intelligent and less likely to be injured runner. Uncle Steve says that any injury below the waste can be contributed to wearing the wrong shoes, which I find fascinating. If that’s the case then I definitely need to get me some new shoes.
Increases in distances and pacing should be methodically planned out and that their is no need to push yourself in training as over-enthusiasm often leads to injury. I can definitely say that I was not ready to run the half-marathon. He also says it takes over 6 months to prepare for a marathon, I can say that I won’t be properly prepared for that either. Unfortunately, my brother and I became “over-enthusiastic” and know we’ll probably be hurting as a result of it.
The substance you run on does have an impact on your body. According to Uncle Steve dirt paths and grass parks are better than macadam and macadam is better than concrete.
Other good ideas would be to check leg-length discrepancies with a chiropracter; doing leg work-outs at appropriate intervals between slow-long distance workouts and speed workouts; checking your heart rate every morning (if your heart rate jumps significantly it’s a good indicator that you’re training too hard); and use ice and advil anytime you feel even the slightest pain in your body.
Thank you Uncle Steve Jaros for your tips on how to cure runner’s knee. I need to do everything I can to make sure that my knees will be ready to complete our first marathon . . . in just 24 days.
In Part 1 of our interview with Peter Engwall, we learned about the man who lost nearly 150 pounds when he decided to change his life for the better. In Part 2, we are going to learn about Peter Engwall, the man he is today. Peter has “an amazing wife, and the best son in the entire world!” And loves coaching his sons baseball and football teams. He’s a Project Manager for a wireless telecommunications company in Seattle, Washington. His schedule is extremely busy, but Peter always makes time for his Ironman training. Peter remains extemely active and we asked him a variety of questions relating to his fitness goals and about his website, http://auggiesdad.sweat365.com/.
As you may recall, Peter began exercising in order to lose weight and quickly discovered that entering himself in endurance events would help him stay focused on the end result of losing weight. One summer, he decided to sign up for his first Sprint Triathalon. Four years later he is planning on completing his first Full Ironman in November. Peter has also set a variety of other goals. He wants to complete an Olympic Distance race in under three hours and plans on completing his first Full Ironman in the alotted 17 hours. Lastly, he wants to remain injury free.
Peter’s life has been filled with memorable experiences. He married his best friend. He witnessed the birth of his son. He was on the Oprah Show. He completed a sprint triathalon. He completed a half marathon. And he completed a half Ironman. As a beginning runner, I know what Peter means when he says that those are memorable moments. It’s about being able to complete something that once was impossible and being able to accomplish something like that makes anything seem possible.
Training allows you to “get away from it all,” Peter says. When in training, all your thoughts and worries get focused on your training and it allows you to clear your head. And for Peter, it has been a surprisingly social activity. He has met numerous people that he has trained and worked with, including our first hero, Mitch Roberts. Peter began training with Mitch because he recognized the fact that it was important to find people to train with that are smarter and people to train with that are faster. I’m not sure which category Mitch falls into, but my guess is that it’s not the smarter one (Just Kidding).
http://auggiesdad.sweat365.com/ is a place that Peter goes to log his workouts and serves as a reminder to when his next races are scheduled. He has been able to track his distances through the website and he says it’s great to see his results grow. His post on http://sweat365.com/blog/2008/05/14/lifestyle-changes-yield-big-results/, is how I learned about Peter losing nearly 150 pounds as a result of his lifestyle change.
Through Peter’s website, he has been able to make many new friends from many different areas. His favorite websites are http://runningbrothers.com/ (obviously) and http://www.slowtwitch.com/. He encourages all of you to be yourself and have fun.
Lastly, Peter believes that every person should make someone else’s life just that much happier. He recommends that you change the life of someone else for the better. And I can honestly say that your story, your participation and becoming one of our heroes has changed our lives for the better.
If you would like to learn more about Peter Engwall, please visit his website, http://auggiesdad.sweat365.com/.
My brother and I will be participating in our first marathon in 30 days. I’m not quite sure how my brother is preparing for the event, but I know that I am going to be devoting a large amount of time to running over the next 30 days. I want to make sure that I can complete the full marathon running the entire way.
When we ran the Rose Bowl Half Marathon in February, I completed the entire run, but knew that I would not have lasted any longer. I actually thought about stopping at around the 11 mile mark, but was able to push through it to continue running. I knew I only had 2 more miles to go to complete the half marathon. But, I think mentally I would have stopped knowing that I would have had to run another 15 miles before I could stop.
I’m excited but nervous about our upcoming marathon. I know that I will not be as prepared as I would like to be, but I am going to try my best to get in the best shape I can by then. I am officically starting my marathon training today and would love some company. If anyone is interested in running daily with me I would be more than happy to have you along.
Steve Ference, you posted two comments, one about swimming during lunch so that we can eat whatever we want and how quitting the drinking of alcohol was a good thing. In order to return the favor, we have made the decision to make you one of our heroes. The honor is immense, but you are worthy.
Viva Movement began as a blog about Steve wanting to become more adventurous. One new such adventure was a sprint triathalon. As Steve puts it, “It was one of the most rewarding things I’ve done.” After that, he was hooked and now VivaMovement has transformed into the chronicling of his journey to become an Ironman.
Steve has a very practical approach to attaining this goal. He is trying to accomplish little steps along the way to reach his ultimate goal. His next step is to run a marathon.
When I emailed Steve, asking him for an interview, he indicated to me that he was moving to South Korea. Originally from Indiana, PA, he and his wife, decided to up and move to the other side of the planet, to teach English to South Koreans. They figured that with no children and no commitments, that this would be there only time to do something like this and is now finding himself getting situated in an entirely new country.
Zeb and I have been working very hard toward our goals. We have been running in a new City, resurected an old bike, biked to the beach, had a professional photoshot, and taken on several local runs. Our sister has also put in a lot of work with our website. We (mostly Zeb) has gotten a lot of followers to our web site. All of this has been great and has happened very fast. I am starting to feel that was the honeymoon period and now we are settling in to the day-to-day of rigerous training.
In response to my brothers post about spamers and auto-bot spamers who leave nonsense comments, I researched spam bots and I found that there is a lot of research and spam bots are actually very sophisicated. They use millions of different IP addresses, which could be hijacked or stolen so you can not block them. It really sounds like a war on spammers by people who are trying to provide information to the public.
Spam bots also automatically scan posts for key words and post to blogs they feel would have would have a more personal connection. So a blog about quilt making should not get spam about male enhancement pills. Likewise blogs about golfing (typically a male sport) will get more of those spam comments.
I am going to guess the type of spam bot comments this post will genererate:
what list about internet spam would not be complete without the big three:
I think by talking about it makes it more likely to happen but lets see which spam bots find this post.
I completed my goal for this week . . . are you surprised?
Weekly Amount:
Running = 10.2 miles
Biking = 43 miles
Swimming = 4300 M or 2.7 miles
Total Amount: 54 miles
Overall Amount:
Running = 30 miles (7.3 miles to downtown L.A.)
Biking = 43 miles (68 miles to downtown S.D.)
Swimming = 12,600 meters or 7.8 miles (29.5 miles to downtown L.A.)
Total = 79 miles (32 miles to downtown S.D.)
Accomplishment:
Zeb Bikes to L.A.
Dear Heroes,
I am buying a bicycle helmet tomorrow and I need advice on what type of helmet to buy. Does anyone have any suggestions?
Zeb