I haven't been posting about boot camp for some reason. So for those of you who are curious what goes on in boot camp here are some details:

Today: On the roof - warm-ups- butt kicks, heel-toe rocks, shoulder stretch, triceps stretch, left-over-right (bend down and touch toes), modified hurdler stretch (right and left), butterfly, quads, ITB, 90 degree squat and then the running begins. First we jog in place, then we do high knees, then more jogging in place. This is to get our blood flowing. I'm usually sweating by this point. Like LT G. told us, I try to keep my abs tight throughout the warm up part of the morning. Then we start PT. Push-ups, steam engines, toe touchers, cherry pickers, mountain climbers, etc. all with jogging in place in-between. I may have missed a few but you get the idea.

Then the Marines broke us into groups based on our mile times (7:30 and faster, 7:30 - 8:30, 8:30 - 9:30 and 9:30 and above). I'm in the 8:30 - 9:30 group. Our group got to go do to the indoor track. We started doing a group run. Problem was our group was the largest and since it takes a while to get that many people down the stairs when I stepped out on the track my group was rounding the corn a quarter of a lap ahead of me. Myself and the rest of the group had to catch them and Sgt H made sure they didn't slow down and wait for us. I took me almost a lap to catch them. Once we all got back together we ran as a group for 2 or 3 laps then the indian runs began. For those of you who have never heard of an indian run, let me explain. Our group was about 30 people. We are all running together in a long single file line which covers about a quarter lap of the track. When we start the indian run the person in the back of the line sprints all out to the front of the line as the rest of the group continues to run. The real challenge is to get folks to realize that the purpose of the indian run is two-fold. First the group must run as a group, it is not about individual effort it is about supporting the group, cheering on folks as they spring and making sure the line is as compact as possible so the sprint is as short as possible (especially when you have 30+ people in your group). There are always a few folks that join a group below what they should be running in. They like to get to the front of the line a pick up the pace causing the line to extend and making it harder for slower folks in the group to sprint. These people don't make friends. Anyway, this is the activity that just about killed me in my first boot camp. That first boot camp I dreaded indian runs. I pulled out of the run a few times to catch my breath and it was also the only activity that almost made me barf (or "Grady"). Now that I am in better shape I actually like the indian runs.

After we ran for a mile or two we headed back up to the roof.  We jumped in for sprint across the four tennis courts, up and back.  Then we ran in a circle for a few minutes and then the entire class got in a large circle and did more PT, focusing mainly on abs.  Did this for about 15 minutes.  A good work out.  My body if finally starting to recover from the long break I had when I was traveling for work and on vacation.  I've been in town about 7 days (work days that is) over the last 7 weeks.  During that time I did run on my own but it is very hard to get a workout in at the same intensity as boot camp.  I'm glad to be back into the routine. 

Once again on travel, this time in Washington DC. Got up there Wednesday afternoon and set up the lab. Went to my hotel and crashed. My wife called and woke me up at 7:30 PM, thank goodness. As I struggled to regain my senses I knew I needed to go workout because I knew I wouldn't Thursday night because I was eating dinner at another NOAA employee's house along with my Korean students and I knew I couldn't Friday evening since I was flying home. So I managed to get my running gear on and headed out. I took a few minutes for my forerunner to connect to the satellites, once it did I headed down to the national mall area. Now this was the first time I've done a truely urban run. Unlike Charleston where you don't really have to wait to long for a break in traffic to cross the street, the same action in DC would get you killed. So, needless to say, there were lots of stops at intersections. You'll be able to see that in the graph. I ran past the White House, almost going into an area I was supposed to go until the nice men with guns corrected me, around the Ellipse, up the hill to the Washington Monument, down to the WWII Memorial, down the lenght of the Reflecting Pond, paid my respects to Honest Abe (was going to run up the stairs for a Rocky moment put it was too crowded), ran over to the Vietnam Memorial (walked through this out of respect), back up to the Ellipse, around the side of the White House, in front of the White House where the nuts have their permanent protests set up and then back up into the area of my hotel. All in all a really pretty run. Seeing the monuments at night, under the moonlight makes for a really nice run.

Now once I started back up 14th or 15th Ave things got a little dicey. If you've never been to DC they have lots of traffic circles. Well it was at Thompson Circle were I got a little turned around. I spent about 30-45 minutes and about 1 mile searching for my hotel. I used this time as a cool down walk and proceeded to walk around in circles. Lots of fun. Felt like a real a**. Here's a link to a web site called Motion Based that I upload my running info to. I'm not sure you all will be able to view but give it a try. This is their new "Player". It allows you to actually see the run as it progresses. You'll see the little red pointer indicate where I was and the info bar above the map will give you the corresponding info like pace and elevation. Let me know if you can or cannot see it. http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/player/6287982

And here is a link to a map of my run, http://maps.google.com/maps?q=http:%2F%2Ftrail.motionbased.com%2Ftrail%2Fkml%2Fepisode.kml%3FepisodePkValues%3D6287982&ie=UTF8&z=14

I've also attached a KML file for those of you who would like to view my run in Google Earth.

And here's a graph of my run. Red = Heart Rate; Green = Elevation; Blue = pace all set to the distance, about 7 miles. The GPS signal wasn't great in downtown DC so the pace is kind of all over the place, heart rate is a better indicator of my effort. But I think you can clearly see that I had to stop a lot at intersections (blue line - but I did not stop THAT much. I think that had more to do with poor signal strength in the urban canyons) and you can see at the end of the run that I was walking, cooling down (i.e., looking for my hotel).

Ran a 5K this morning on Johns Island.  It's amazing the difference in temperature between 6AM (when I usually work out/run) and 8AM (when the race started).  It was hot.  Dang hot.  This was a cross country type of race, meaning we were on dirt/over grown roads and paths around a lake.  I started out trying to take the curves as close as possible to keep from running any more distance than I had to.  By half way through the race I had changed strategies and was finding the most direct path to the next shady patch along the race route.  I started out at a pace of under 10 minute/miles.  Held this for about a mile.  Declined after that.

I'm not sure how often my Forerunner captures the pace reading because, as you can see from the chart above, it is very erratic.  Regardless, you can see a couple of spikes up to the 20 min/mile range.  No way to hide the fact I took a couple of walk breaks.  Like I said, it was hot.  The spike at the end is showing that I didn't stop my Forerunner until about 20 feet after I crossed the finish line and was walking.  It also means the Forerunner time of 33:05 was a little off.  I think I crossed the line at 32:47, about a minute slower than my time from the ALS Hope 5K on the beach at IOP a few weeks ago.  All in all, any race you finish is a good race.  I wasn't last and I beat some skinny people.  One of the highlights was watching a guy think he crossed the finish line, pour a drink in his face and then do a belly slide on the ground for some strange reason.  The look on his face when someone told him the finish was about 10 feet in front of him was priceless.  Well, plenty more work to do to get ready for the half marathon in February but I'm putting miles on my legs.  This week I've run about 12.5 miles.  I will probably do a long run Sunday.

Well, I'm back. In the past three weeks I have been in Biloxi, MS; Topsail, NC (on vacation); and Durham, NH. I didn't do too bad exercising. In Biloxi a ran three times including a 5 mile run. I didn't intend this to be a long run but I felt good so I just kept going. Being able to see the Gulf of Mexico while running helps. I find scenery a nice distraction. On this long run I got to see slabs where houses used to be and massive casinos all right along the coast. Interesting contrast. Diet wasn't great but it wasn't awful. Some fried food but some baked/grilled food as well. I even hit the buffet at the casino I was staying at and only went back once finishing my plate neither time. On vacation, I ran once with my brother and sister. I ran once with my sister on a tempo run, 10 minutes jogging, 2 miles at 5K pace, 10 minutes jogging. I ran once with my wife until she bled. Just kidding (kind of). I encouraged her to go a little further. I noticed that a blister she had on her achilles was bleeding but I didn't tell her until we got to our half-way turn around point. She did very well and now has I nice blood shoe she can brag about. I intended on doing a long run while at the beach but laziness got the best of me. Diet was your typical vacation diet. Some over eating and some poor choices while dining out. Nothing extreme. In NH I did nothing. Let's just call it a week of rest for my legs. My diet was OK. Again, no extremes. I ate breakfast everyday. Lunches were at the university cafeteria which was surprisingly nice. Had a couple bowls of chowda and a couple of lobsta rolls while I was there. Very nice.

Now I back in town for a week. When I got back I gave out the gifts I brought back from NH to my girls. After that I noticed they had gotten me a gift, a Garmin Forerunner 305! What a cool toy! This is a watch size GPS device that will let me keep track of the routes I run, my times, my pace and even comes with a heart rate monitor. I used it yesterday on a run with Greg. We ran through old Mt. Pleasant, about 4.5 miles. The Forerunner worked well. The more I use it the more I will use the advanced functionality like alarms. I can set it to tell me when I'm outside of a specified pace or heart rate. It should really help me training for the half marathon. I also went to the "in-between" boot camp yesterday morning. We used body bars and dumb bells to make the workout a little harder. I am really sore today. Going from 3 runs a week to two workouts in one day is a little harder than I thought it would be. More motivation to workout while I'm on travel.

Diet - yesterday - Bfast - nutri grain bar Lunch - leftover spaghetti, 100 cal pudding Dinner - Pork with hoisin sauce/rice, 3 slices of garlic bread.