I got a new personal best time for the mile this weekend at the Valentine’s Race. I love to hear Lance and Paula telling me that I’ve achieved a new personal best time, but I wasn’t very happy this time around. It seems that my Nike+ registered a wildly inaccurate pace for the first mile of the 5k, recording my new PB of 7′51″. I’m stoked to have taken second place in our fastest mile challenge, but I’d much rather earn the honor than take someone else’s spot due to a technological fluke.

I ran my second race this morning, the 11th Annual Bartlett Parks & Recreation Valentine’s Day 5k. I’ve run the 5k distance plenty of times since graduating from the Couch to 5k program, but it seems like a completely different animal when I’m running an honest-to-goodness race.

I was nervous and excited the night before the race, and I had a case of pre-race jitters all morning long, but when I got out on the course I calmed down quite a bit. I kept up a nice steady pace and had just enough juice left at the end to really pick up some speed and charge across the finish line.

I haven’t gotten back my official time yet, but the Nike+ iPod says I ran the race in 31′33″, a pace of just over 10′ per mile, beating my time in my last 5k race by more than 3 minutes! It was an exciting run, a good, solid 5k time, and a great experience.

Update: Official results are in!  My official time was 31′30”, very close to my Nike+ recorded time.  I came in 10th in my age group and 126th overall!  Not bad for a former couch potato, eh?

How was your trip?

That is what should have been asked of me when I was sprawled out on someone’s lawn yesterday. Finally, I nice afternoon in Memphis and I was headed out for my 7 mile run. I got to mile 3 and I saw my friend Leigh driving down the road and I turned to wave to her. Then it happened…I hit a a break in sidewalk and took a dive. I cut the mess out of my hand and either sprained, jammed, or broke my middle finger and not to mention my bruised ego. Now after roughly two minutes or so staring up at the sky and wishing I could hope in my Delorean, hit 85MPH, and fix my idiot move I stood up and weighed my options. I was half a mile from the half way point of my room. So…should I cut the run short or do I push through the pain and finish what I set out to do. I opted to finish. So I hit my power song and finished the entire run. When it was all said and done was it worth it? Well it seemed to be worth it until I started typing this blog with one of my digits not working well. You would be surprised what you use your middle finger for besides flipping other people off.

Last night I had a TERRIFIC five miler. It was a little cold outside when I started, but that little inconvenience soon disappeared. I felt really good right afterwards, partly because I knew tonight I would just have to run a quick three miler, rest tomorrow, and then eight miles on Sunday; that was until I remembered that my wife and I have dinner plans with some friends right after work.

However, it wasn’t that big of a deal. I decided to get up a little earlier in the morning and knock it out. I was out the door this morning a little later than I would have liked, but still on schedule. I jumped on the treadmill and started my five minute warm up when I realized I had forgot my iPod®. DAMN!!! I started to convince myself that what was important complete my miles not whether or not I had music or my chip to log this run. I decided to suck it up and do what I came to do.

Yea…that lasted literally two minutes. I don’t know if I was just tired from the night before or just lazy, but I didn’t have ANY energy to keep going so I bowed out. I was very disappointed in myself, but I guess that is why we fall of the horse every now and then…so that we can get up and get back on.

Having run 95 miles last month (a personal best), I took several days off to rest. Boy was that a mistake! This was the hardest run I’ve had in a while and getting back into my rhythm felt like a chore. The 35˚F frosty morning air, coupled with the fact I went to bed at 1 a.m. and got up at 6 a.m. really was a lethal combination. If I learned one thing from yesterday’s run around the neighborhood, it would be that a good night’s sleep prior to a morning run works wonders for the mind and the body. I just wish someone had told me that the night before!

One thing I have always had extremely good experience with is Nike+ customer support. I mean, to pay $30 for a Nike+ device and in exchange, receive free, limitless support is a pretty good deal for the consumer. Here’s a typical example of the kind of response I have received from Nike+ customer support. In particular, notice how the tone is sympathetic yet positive/encouraging, it really adds to the motivational experience associated with Nike+:

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I don’t know if the planets were aligned, or if was just my lucky day, but my run last night felt great. I ended up having lunch with an old friend, Vince Perryman, who got me into cross-country running while I was in high school. The difference between Vince and myself is that, oh yeah, he is an elite runner and hasn’t stopped running since the age of 14. I mentioned to Vince my born-again dedication to running.

While explaining some of the recent trials and tribulations with my training plan for the Germantown Half Marathon, Vince offered some astute and simple advice:

“Don’t think about always beating your personal best. There is a fine line between pushing yourself during training and pushing yourself over the limit. You might not only injury yourself physically, but break yourself mentally.”

While I was suffering through the St. Jude/Memphis Half Marathon in December, Vince was setting a personal best for the FULL marathon. When asked what made this race different, he said it was because he didn’t worry about anything but the current moment. He didn’t over think his strategy. He just ran HIS race.

So last night I stood out in my front yard and told myself that I was going to forget about the challenges and just run. I would run hard, but smart. I ran right past the Pyramid when I heard, “400 meters to go!” I thought to myself that I would sprint the last distance. I didn’t think about how far I had already run nor did I think about what my pace was or might have been. I just ran my way.

When I completed my last 400 meters and ended my workout, I heard that WONDERFUL, welcoming female voice telling me I had beat my personal best and I was very happy with my average pace per mile. Furthermore, I was excited to just be out there, enjoying my run again, oh — and not falling down and almost breaking my finger, like I did last week!

Each month, the writers and producers of this Web site participate in some friendly competition with several friends and colleagues. While half the runners live in Memphis, Tennessee in the USA, the other half live within the English counties Hertfordshire and the West Midlands. That’s one of the great attractions and conveniences to Nike+ challenges and Nike+ in general — friends can compete against each other no matter what their geographical location may be, or what time of day or night they run. It’s only until all the running data from each individual run is uploaded to the Nike+Web site that we get to compare and contrast our performances against one another.

View this month’s challenges

Knowing that your friends are trying to run faster or maybe further than you, is what inspires and motivates us to keep in shape and run as best as we can. Whether we know it or not, we are motivating one another by each individual mile we run. Now that we’ve made our challenges public for the world to see, we now have a little more motivation and incentive to get up and run each day.

I’ve recently noticed the toenail on my left big toe turning black. I had no idea what was going on and I was worried that I might be growing something nasty under there. This morning, while hanging out on the Runner+ Forum, I found out that I’ve got a simple case of a bruised toenail, also known as “Runner’s Toe” or “Black Toe.”

SpartanGirl started the conversation by asking about bruised toenails and what to do about them. Rasmus pointed us to Jeff Galloway’s post on black toe, what it is, and what you can do about it. Jeff explains it like this:

“If a toe is under pressure from the shoe or a sock that is too tight or too thick, the sustained pressure, step after step, produces an impact or a friction problem between the toenail and the tissue surrounding it. When the tissue gets damaged, fluid accumulates.”

Jeff goes on to say that it’s best to simply ignore the black toenail, as long as the pain is manageable. If it gets too bad, he offers some advice on how to relieve the pressure.

Thankfully, my case of black toe isn’t causing me too much pain at the moment. Now that I know what’s going on down there, it’s like a “black badge of courage.” If the problem persists, I can always pick up some of the Deluxe Gel Toe Caps that Rasmus recommends.

I know that the title is pretty cliche’, but there definitely isn’t a title as fitting to describe my run last Wednesday. Though it was only a four miler, and the terrain was pretty flat, I felt I was running up hill the entire time. If there is one thing that I can say about training thus far, I have experienced about every end of the spectrum when it comes to weather.

Though during the time I might hate it when I look back I know that the benefits are generous. Let’s face it…not every race is going to be under conditions of 70 degrees and sunny nor am I always going to feel in tip-top health. That is why that I truly feel that training for long distances races doesn’t only mean conditioning your physical body, but as well your mental strength.