Sunday, January 3, 2010

5 mile recovery run and Christmas gifts

I was sore from my 3.5 miles up and down the trails yesterday. Mostly sore in my hamstrings and glut medius (the sides of my hips). After an easy mile warm up I was able to settle into an easy recovery pace around 8:15 to 8:30. I made it 5 miles today in about 42 minutes. My left hamstring is more sore than the right but not at the insertion as before, mostly in the muscle belly or mid-thigh (a better soreness to have).
I am planning on getting back into my lunch circuit-core routine 2-3x/wk starting this week. I think I will need to be consistent with that program to make it through some long trail runs.

Some running related Christmas gifts that I received this year included a 4Gb IPOD shuffle, a book titled A Father's Odyssey 75 marathons in 75 consecutive days, and the movie/documentary "Running the Sahara."
I tested out the IPOD shuffle yesterday and it works great. It is so much lighter than my old MP3 player and you can clip it anywhere. Also with 4Gb of storage you can hold well over a thousand songs, put it on shuffle mode, and you could run for over 2 days without repeating a song (the battery would die before a song would repeat).
The book details the story of 57 year old Terry Hitchcock who, in 1996, ran from St. Paul, MN to Atlanta, GA in 75 days to raise awareness for hardships faced by single parents and their children and their "daily marathon." He is a widower who raised three children. I have not read the book yet, but when I do I will write a book report.
I was given the DVD "Running the Sahara" from both my brother and sister (so I have two copies). I guess they know me pretty well. We watched it over the holidays and I would recommend it to anyone, runner or not. It documents the expedition of three men as they ran across the Sahara Desert starting at the Atlantic Ocean in Senegal and ending at the Red Sea in Egypt. I won't give too much away but the movie makes running thousands of miles exciting (and dramatic), and showcases some stunning landscapes in north Africa. The movie also helps raise awareness for H2O Africa, a clean water initiative supporting the water crisis in Africa.

Oh, and I got a nice 8x10 photo of the finish line at Grandma's Marathon, my first sub 3 hour marathon.

Did anyone else get any great running related Christmas gifts? Please share!


"If you don't set goals, you can't regret not reaching them."
--Yogi Berra

I love Yogi!

3 comments:

Tom Ham said...

Dan gave me the gift of covering my entry fee for running the Portland Marathon with him next October. Looks like I'll have to start training soon!

Chuck said...

Dan......That was a great gift! How awesome running an out of state marathon with your brother!

My brother (who tracks me online at all of my marathons & always has a voice mail congratulating me when I get back to my hotel room) gave me a $100 gift card for Big 5. He also lives in Palmdale and will be 50 this year. Unfortunately a couple of years ago he had to have a heart valve replaced. Then a year later he had a serious motorcycle accident. He is doing fine, but running a marathon is not in his future. I will use the gift card to get running shoes.

P.S.......I am also a big fan of Yogi Berra!

Daniel said...

I got a book from my brother that I will have to read and review. It is called "Once A Runner." Looks pretty good. Thanks, Tom! My folks gave me some reusable ice packs...maybe I can save on ice baths now.

Also, a friend gave me a watch/stopwatch that has an attached whistle. Seriously. Know any coaches that might be interested?