runningchunk.com

A witty wrap-up to follow. For now, there's some stuff on the Instagrams tagged #rc5k2014. Thanks, dudes!

So, /var/run/amy designed this thing and then arranged for said thing to be physically manifested as a hat.

You should buy one. Go to the RC5K event page to fulfill this obligation. And sign up for the race if you haven't already, sheesh. 

What? This ain't running. 

Dun dun DUUUUUUUUNNN!

On Friday morning, Bryant and I leave for Sioux Falls, South Dakota, from where we'll ride to the start of RAGBRAI 2014 in Rock Valley, Iowa. OMG you are so excited, so here's some stuff:

• the route: http://ragbrai.com/routemaps/2014-route-maps/
• me being sarcastic: https://twitter.com/runningchunk
• me posting sarcastic photos: http://instagram.com/onedayfishsale/

And in general, search for #ragbrai on whatever social media network to get an idea of what's going on. See you in a week or so!

Having been officially called out in Nancy's latest blog, here's an update on all things runningchunk.

Nancy, Amy, and I are in the midst of what we're calling the team /var/run Training Plan of Doom (TPoD). It's essentially Hal Higdon's Advanced Half Marathon plan for Nancy, the same thing but with a bit less running and a lot more biking for me, and I think something similar to that for Amy. Zoe is on the OMG YOU HAVE TO TAKE ME RUNNING plan as usual. Anyway, occasional goofy group runs continue and are usually documented on Instagram.

This weekend's run was a 5K at 5K race pace. One of my goals for the year (see, just look at that blog draft over there where I totally talk about goals) is a sub-25-minute 5K. When I first started thinking about it I was shooting for the September-October-November-probably 2014 runningchunk.com 5K so I could totally smoke those schmoes, but somehow I felt like going for it on Sunday.

I made it, just, and it hurt. Seriously, this was hard. I usually whine about any run where I've done over 85% effort, but this was 100%. After I could see straight again, I plugged my 5K time into every half marathon race time predictor I could find (even though predicting 13.1 miles based on 3.11 miles is pretty darn bogus), and I'm feeling hopeful about a sub-2-hour half in Green Bay. Wood being knocked on for sure.

Now I'm sorta broken and for sure exhausted and the weather's bad again. But I'll be back out there tomorrow, chasing goals, chasing that feeling of accomplishment, and for sure chasing the dog.

We planned. We tried. But other things prevailed and our first ever team ride became James (an interloper) and me on mountain-ish bikes.

James showed up this afternoon, much to the concern—and then joy—of Dog. We decided to ride trails, so I opted for my trust rigid MTB, still in race configuration and not yet prep'd for winter commuting.

After some light trespassing on a property for sale, we followed a barely-even-gated road that popped us out on the power line trail between South Range and Painesdale. James, "totally [knowing] where we are" pointed us to Redridge, and we got lost.

After a bit of backtracking, we made it out to Freda, and then scooted up to Covered Dr. Not long after, James "knew" another shortcut.

After crashing a few times and traversing what were probably several back yards, we popped out at the end of E.B. Holman Rd. Pretty much exactly where we started before hitting Covered Dr.

A bit of a slog up Liminga Rd and then S Superior, and we were back at the ranch. Covered in mud and grinning.

It sounds like I'm bitching about the shortcuts and getting lost, but it was really a lot of fun. The weather turned out pretty nice for November, and it felt good to get out and get tired.

Somehow I thought it would be a good idea to bike commute every work day in October. As a reward for my insanity, I would dress up as a pumpkin for my ride on Halloween.

So this happened:

Which meant that this happened:

The National Bike Challenge thing was kinda fun. I logged 1724 miles during the challenge (May through September), which put me in 10th place on the local leaderboard. Some other interesting stats:

• Atlantic Mine came in second to Copper Harbor (measured in points per capita) on the local leaderboard
• Michigan Tech took the lead for workplaces
• Atlantic Mine was 8th nationally at the end of the challenge (whoa)
• I ended up 394th nationally for October