Running Towards Fitness

Personal Awareness
The ancient Greeks used to believe that a healthy mind and a healthy body not only went together, but were both critical for happiness and a successful life. They were also intertwined, meaning that a weakness in either area would affect the other. When I started this transformation I was overweight and full of excuses. And by overweight I don't mean just a few pounds - I weighed over 70 pounds more than I do now. I finally took my life into my own hands and started exercising. At the time, I had no idea where it would lead - to a stronger body, a happier, more nimble mind, and a chest full of race medals. Healthy mind, healthy body, indeed! It hasn't been easy, or without issues, but I wouldn't trade the experience for the world.

Wilke

Isn't it amazing how word gets around in a tight-knit running group? Yes, I cut today's workout short; I rode back with Gilbert instead of running back for a cooldown. No, I wasn't injured. The only reason I did it was that I was late for a ...

Tempo Run

This was a little different. We met at RunTex at 5:45 (the new standard time for the marathon group), and were told that Circuit was over for a while. Our task this morning was simply to run the ten mile loop with a 20 minute warmup, 40 minutes ...

What just happened?

Shhh... Listen carefully. Did you hear that? No? That was the sound of something beautiful, the gentle tinkle of, oh, about ten seconds falling away from my 400M time. Alright, so now that I look at my last set its closer to 7 seconds but still, ...

Chicken Fighting?

Today's workout was solid but nothing new - 3 iterations of the standard circuit workout with an 800M run before each one. The weather was much nicer than it was yesterday, and I felt moderately strong through it all. I did notice that I had more speed through ...

I was tired this morning

I didn't even realize it, but I must have been tired this morning. Possibly I was still a little drained from Saturday's 17 miler (which I've now properly blogged, if you just saw the teaser earlier). Anyway, when I got to the workout this morning Gilbert told me ...

Interesting Intervals

Despite what I said yesterday, I ended up parking down by RunTex and doing the warmup run to Austin High. There were two reasons for this - first, I was feeling pretty stiff and wanted the full 1.6 mile warmup (if I do it by myself on the track ...

400M Circuit

Today's circuit training was a little different than usual, since we were cut down to a 400M recovery run between sets rather than our normal 800M. As always, we started out with our 1.6 mile warmup run - I chatted to Jay on the way over - and went ...

Ten (er, eight) mile pace run

A lot of my marathon training group got the message to meet at 5:45 this morning because we were scheduled to jump from a 7 mile Monday run to a 10 miler (and stay there until NYC). For some reason about 8 of us never heard about it, so ...

4 Mile Tempo

It was another humid day in Austin as we gathered at RunTex for our Thursday workout: a four mile tempo run. I'm in a bit of a hurry, so forgive me and I'll just summarize this one: On the way out to MoPac I started out with a 7:45 ...

Fartleks-n-drills

Today was a little bit different from a normal Gazelle workout. We met down at RunTex and then headed out for five miles on the trail without our normal separate warmup and drills. Gilbert had told us to do a solid 15 minute warmup, and Jay (who got ...


About

I'm Richard Stanford, a fit, happy runner. Of course, that wasn't always the case. Dip into the archives to follow my progress from couch potato to sub-four hour marathoner.

I also like to cook, write, code, and play with power tools...

Personal Records

DistanceRaceTimePace
Marathon2006 Freescale3:54:078:56
20 Miles2006 RunTex3:00:089:00
30K2005 RunTex2:42:448:45
Half M2006 3M1:42:577:51
20K2005 Decker1:40:428:06
10 Miles2005 Pervasive1:20:138:01
10K2005 Dublin Dr Pepper48:437:51
5 Miles2005 Turkey Trot37:017:24
5K2005 Margarita Run22:327:15
4K2006 Fila Relays17:247:15
1 Mile2006 Congress Ave6:236:23

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May 20th 2007
Tags: Running, Races

One Comment

2007 North Trail Half Marathon

I'll start out by saying that this wasn't a PR.  Not even close.  It was, however, a really fun race, taking place in the middle of a fun weekend, surrounded by fun friends. Fun! Going into it I knew that I wasn't going to PR.  To be honest, I was more than ...
May 19th 2007
Tags: Running

No Comments

Update

Well, so much for keeping the blog current, eh? I've been doing pretty well, most of the time. I'm currently in Dallas just a few hours away from running in a small half marathon (400 people, give or take) - and I've only managed to get up to 10.5 miles ...
April 10th 2007
Tags: Running

No Comments

Lunchtime Ladera

This was my third time to run Ladera Norte, and its actually getting easier.  I walked once, about 3 minutes into the hill, for a minute (timed), then ran the rest of the way.  Not that I was fast - the remainder took me a solid 5 minutes - but I ...
March 4th 2007
Tags: Running, Races

9 Comments

2007 BagelFest 5K

I'm very glad that I did this race.  I almost didn't - the idea of doing something where I know that I wasn't going to come close to a PR was not terribly enticing - but I've done it every year since I started running, and its been a whole ...
March 1st 2007
Tags: Running

One Comment

Unplanned 3 Miler

Well... I know that I said that I wasn't goint to run today... but I did anyway.  You see, at lunch today Thon offered to run his 3 mile hill loop with me this evening.  Naturally I stuck to the gameplan and told him that I wasn't running until Saturday.  ...
February 27th 2007
Tags: Running

One Comment

Rollingwood Revisited

I went to Rollingwood for the second time - or at least the second time since my recovery - and while ended up running a slightly different course due to inattention, it was a fantastic run.  Last time I averaged a 9:41 pace (9:54, 9:30, 9:46) around the hills, and it felt ...

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Famous Marathon Times

RunnerTimePace
Al Gore4:58:2511:23
Oprah4:29:3010:17
P. Diddy4:14:549:43
Will Ferrell3:56:129:01
George W. Bush3:44:528:35
John Edwards3:30:188:01
Carrie Sapp3:29:067:59
Boston Qualifier3:10:597:17
Lance Armstrong2:59:366:51
Gilbert Tuhabonye2:23:075:28
Paula Radcliffe2:15:255:10
Paul Tegat2:04:554:46

People I Train With

Alex - Addicted to Exercise
Carrie - Tri to be Funny
Erine - Thousand Miles
Frank - Running Blog
Gilbert - Gilbert's Gazelles
Jay - Leotian Blog
Mike - BROTH