Is There A Doctor In The House - a Prescription for Fun

We will step the intervals up another notch this week before starting over with shorter intervals again next week. Time for our first mile repeats of the year:
Mile warmup
Mile at speed
1/2 Mile recovery
Mile at speed
1/2 Mile cool down
So, two miles at speed in the midst of a four mile run.

I should have done this part before -- I think a few of you will find this useful:
For anyone curious about what a GPS watch provides you or who has been thinking about a GPS watch - here is what the output looks like. (Assuming I've opened up the permissions properly.) I put off getting a GPS watch for a couple years, but once I received mine as a gift, there was no going back. It provides distance, pace, elevation (so-so quality -- can't truly trust the elevation but it gives you a rough idea), heart rate (with optional strap), and a great google map summary of your workout. If you glance around at what happened during the Paige's run, you can clearly see where we took a quick breather later in the race and I can clearly see that I was overheating/overstressing...because my heart rate just kept climbing. I'm surprised to see how high my heart rate ended up. Normally it would not do that at the paces we were running. (Which allows me to think about my race day preparation and execution and attempt to figure out what went wrong.)

GPS watches are still expensive, but I highly recommend them. The online summary is great (and a free feature to use), it helps you manage your pace during races or long runs, and allows you to not have to measure/map out runs ahead of time. Especially while traveling, it's great to just be able to run out the door and trust the watch to know when I've covered the distance I wanted to cover.

About the Paige's Butterfly Race -- this was on facebook on Sunday, so not much new here for those who saw the pictures:
It all started by seeing a brief mention of the race and fun 'centipede division' in a weekly work email distribution. I noticed the blurb, forwarded it to some co-working TRYers and asked simply 'are you thinking what I'm thinking?' Turns out that some others were intrigued. Some recruiting/re-recruiting/begging later and we had our 5 team members. There was some behind the scenes brainstorming for theme ideas and finally a vote on which version to use.

The team trusted me when I said the costume would be all set. And with some major help from my consigliere Catherine and her sister, I showed up with two bags full of costumes. The set-up was confusing and hectic (some volunteers weren't able to tell us where to go, so it took a while to figure it out on our own)...I started handing out props and clothing and bless their hearts, they just kept putting them on. So an ordinary group of runners became Dr Dre, Doc Halladay, Dr McDreamy, Dr Pepper, and Dr Seuss (mispelled).



Dr Seuss and Dr Pepper did a great job setting the pace and picking our path, while the three in lab coats did a great job of not slowing them down too much. We made quite a scene and kept getting our pictures taken whether we wanted them or not. A murmur swept through the crowd whenever we walked or ran through...as we stood out a bit.

For our efforts we won the centipede competition race as well as the costume contest.


But more importantly we won Paige's parents thanks. They thanked us for our creativity and for adding so much fun to their event.



And I'll end with this thought -- one of the team members was heard saying "I've never ran a race for fun, before". Which reminded me -- it's important to have fun once in a while. So, if you've never ran a race for fun before, think about it. Find a fun race to do, whether it be a concept or a location, and run it below your pace. Look around. Enjoy the scenery. Enjoy the crowd. You just might like it! And you never know just how far that fun will take you. You might even end up being famous for it. :-)



A special thanks to the Centipediatricians. For trusting me. And for not just playing along, but for playing it up. You won the crowd! You were awesome.