Honey Stinger Hive

Just wanted to send a huge shout out to the guys at Honey Stinger for selecting me to be part of the Hive, their new grassroots sponsorship program. Thanks!

Policemen dunk donuts in coffee. Kids dunk chocolate chip cookies in milk. Athletes dunk energy waffles in tea?

Seriously, these things are addictive and everyone needs to try a Honey Stinger waffle. I'm going to start handing them out randomly to people I see on runs and bike rides. I think they're that good. Challenge...accepted!

Bricks and Books...

Happy Presidents Day!

I enjoyed my day off doing a little work from home in the morning and followed it up with a great brick workout. If you check out the details of my workouts on Daily Mile, you'll see I'm trying something a little different for a while...going slow. Well, I already go slow so maybe just slower. I've been reading a lot about Low Heart Rate training and am waiting for a book from Amazon to arrive in my mailbox.


From what I've heard, The Big Book of Endurance Training and Racing is to physical fitness as Think and Grow Rich is to entrepreneurs. It creates a foundation and basically explains in no uncertain terms what you need to do to accomplish your goals. It makes it seem simple. The hard part, as anyone knows who's ever tried to do anything, is that you've actually got to start and, more importantly, be determined to stick it out through the tough times.


The author, Philip Maffetone, doesn't make grandiose claims to help you create a beach body or give you a secret to run a 5 minute mile. Instead his methods to make you go faster are to actually go slower. The goal for each training session, whether it's running, biking, swimming, pogo sticking, or skipping to your lou, is to keep your heart rate as close to a certain number without going over. Welcome to The Price is Right...For Faster Run Times.


Take 180 and subtract your age. This is your new favorite number. The idea is that your body will become more efficient at this "low" heart rate and over the next couple months of training you'll actually see improvements and run faster while maintaining this rate. You become aerobically fit.


My first experience at maintaining this heart rate (on the run today) dropped my pace from my usual 8:45 pace to a molasses-like 12:30 pace. I honestly felt like I could walk faster. In preparation for Ironman 70.3 Austin in October, I expect to see my pace at 149 beats per minute drop from 12:30 to around the 7:00 minute mark. Maybe I'm just being optimistic. After all, the book is still on its way to my mailbox.

It Takes Two To Tradition

"If you do something once, it's a happening. It takes two to tradition." -- Me

Last year for my 30th birthday I thought it'd be a good idea to commemorate a milestone birthday with a milestone event: run 30 miles. Yeah...seriously. I wasn't going for time. I just wanted to finish, and I did -- barely -- in 6 hours and 30 minutes. Wanting to create a lasting tradition where every year I'll run my age in miles*, this year I set out to do 31. The * being that I want to run each year's distance faster than the overall time from the previous year.

Compared to last year's 10 day training program (4 mile run 10 days out, 18 mile run 4 days out), this year I took 3 solid weeks to train. It's still waaaaaay less preparation than I should do, and could easily lead to injury, but at least it was better than last year.

End result: 5 hours, 20 minutes.

To say I was ecstatic afterwards was an understatement. I mean, really...who drops 70 minutes? Me, that's who! There were definitely times during the run that I wanted to quit or told myself I wouldn't do this next year. I didn't and I will.

If you feel like running 31 miles and haven't properly trained:

• Plan your route. The southern side of White Rock Lake is the only part of the lake with noticeable hills. I cut them out. Instead of running 3+ 9.3 mile loops including the hills, I decided I'd do 5 mile "out and backs" 3 times on the flat part of the lake. This was by far the most important decision I made regarding my run.
• Start slow. I went out way too fast last year and had to walk the last 4 miles. I wasn't going to let that happen again. I kept my heart rate around 150 for the first 10 miles, 160 for the second 10, and 165 for the last 11. Never walked.
• Hydrate effectively. Nuun hydration tabs are awesome. They're little dissolving tabs that you put in your water bottle and are full of electrolytes. I used to get calf cramps every time I ran over 15 miles, but since I started using these last year in various runs and bike rides, I haven't cramped once. I drank 3 20oz bottles of Nuun/water on my run and another 12oz of water every 2 hours after until I went to bed.
• Make sure you can see. If you start a run at 4:26am, odds are the Sun won't be up for a couple hours. Take a headlamp. It's better than a flashlight because it keeps your hands free. I thought to take my headlamp that morning, and it was definitely the right thing to do.
• Check the weather the day before. I wasn't sure if I was going to run in the morning or the afternoon, but when I realized it was going to be 15 degrees warmer at 2pm than 6am, it was an easy decision to run in the morning. I also knew I wasn't going to need my jacket.
• Entertain yourself. You'll be running a while. My iPod playlist was great. The first hour was the All Day album by Girl Talk, a DJ who does amazing mashups of top 40 hip hop and 80's tracks. The artist posted the album online for free download. Get it here.

Traveling and Training

I've never been very good at maintaining my training regiment when I travel. Whether for business or just a vacation, it's as like the "need to workout" switch in my brain gets turned off. I think I'll try a little harder to change that this year...that's all it takes, right?

I'm currently 3 days in on a 17 day trip to China for work. In the summer, the weather is ridiculously hot and humid and the smell is often less than pleasant. Luckily, it's mid 60's outside and recent rain has kept the air quality at a tolerable level.

The first day I gave myself a pass and skipped the gym -- I had spent the last 27 hours travelling from Dallas to Chicago to Shanghai to Hong Kong -- and was completely exhausted and nonfunctioning.

Yesterday morning I only hit my 6am snooze button twice before getting up and checking out the hotel gym at the Mira hotel where I'm staying. It's pretty nice, very clean, and you usually have it all to yourself. They also have a pool, but I think it's only 20m long. Weird.

Today was better: no snooze, just get up out of bed. I don't know why, but I always feel better when I just get up instead of falling back asleep and being woken up by an obnoxious alarm every 7 minutes. Ran 5k on the treadmill and then did some squats and ab work. Wait. What? I know, I know...you're saying to yourself "Steve you don't have abs." Well my response is "They're in there somewhere. I'm just looking for them."

Here's to hoping I can keep this up for 2 more weeks. It'll get harder when we go into Shenzhen this weekend and the hotels are, um, lacking. If anything, it'll make me try even harder to find a way to make it work.

New job + new city = new places to train

No more swims at Tower 26 in Santa Monica Bay. No more bike rides from Culver City to Malibu. No more training runs on the Strand from Marina del Rey to Palos Verdes. Gone are the palm tree-lined streets and clear blue skies and constant 70 degree temperatures.

About 6 weeks ago I left sunny Los Angeles for a new job in Dallas, TX. To say the change of scenery has been dramatic would be an understatement. The temperature is currently consistently in the 40's, golden and red leaves fall from the trees and crunch under your feet, and hills are something you hear about but never see.

After my first week at work I learned about the Dallas White Rock marathon that would take place 2 weeks later and was asked if I was interested in joining other coworkers in running. Sure, I could go from 0 to 26.2 in two weeks. Sounds fun, right? It wasn't. I got a sharp pain in my hip around mile 3, toughed it out and finished in 4:37. My half marathon split was 1:54 and for very limited training, I am very pleased with the result. Also, it turns out that the other coworkers were only running the half marathon. Not really the way I planned on establishing a reputation at work, but I'll take it.

My 2011 race plan is more or less out the window now because it consisted of mostly southern California races, so I'm reworking it now to include races in the Austin, Houston, and Dallas areas. I'm also planning on adding gym workouts to my training which is something I've never really done. Lots of research, lots of planning...lots of fun.