Day 246: Tempo Was Something I Learned In Music Class: Wasn't Good At It Then, Not Good At It Now!

Salutations Mammoths.

So this is a special twofer edition of the WMR blog! I wanted to spend a moment on today's work out. Now as most of you know I am a disciple of Michael Williams and WoW Boot Camp and I have been following his directions as I prepare for the ultimate Mammoth challenge, the FULL MARATHON. Well on top of that I have teamed up with Team In Training to raise money to fight cancer and run a 1/2 marathon in Savannah the first weekend in November. So far I have followed Michael's work out schedule to the letter, mostly because I trust him with my life so I know that he has my best interest at heart and he knows me and my capabilities. Now that doesn't mean my TNT trainer isn't any good, in fact the Mommoth loves her training schedule which for the most part is exactly like Michaels--which brings us to todays work out.

So Michael had me doing a Level 2 heart rate run for 45 minutes and the TNT workout today was a tempo run for 35 minutes. So being the genius that I am I decided to say, "Hey I can do both workouts and make everybody happy." It was a good plan but the execution was terrible!

Now first I must confess that I am a gym snob. I love the YMCA but their equipment is a little substandard to what I am used too. It still works great but for a Mammoth there can be issues. The biggest issue I have is that the hand rails were made for my old roommate on Heavy, Tim, who is a little person. I mean I would get a full stride going and then BAM I would hit the stop button! Totally annoying! Next the cardio room was like working out in the La Pa kitchen on Friday night in August. It was hot! (How hot was it!!!) It was so hot that if I had not been wearing any underwear I would have been doing some crotch pot cooking (drum rim shot please, I am here all week, tip your waitress.) Lastly, I had the Cubs (hate baseball on TV, nothing more boring) and Glenn Beck on the only two TVs in my line of sight. So I am unhappy in my surroundings. Now add in a tempo run where when we hit mile two I had to sprint for two minutes (Heart rate zone 3 for those playing along at home) and then back it down for two minutes and you can see my problems. Next time I am just sticking with Michael's plan. It was a great work out but the starts and stops were really, really annoying.

Alright Mammoths I am 5 days away from my first Peachtree and I am so excited. My man Jeff Ford from H3 will be running as will some of my fellow cast mates from Heavy! It is going to be great to be reunited with my good friends and I look forward to collecting my tshirt. If you are wondering about when the interview will air it will be on Monday night at 8 pm on Channel 11. I wore my white WoW Boot Camp shirt and I look amazing! Sorry but a Mammoth has to raise his trunk sometimes!

Well its off to bed. Rest day tomorrow and then its the big weekend before the race. I hope that you have success rambling on the range, stick close to a good watering hole, and as always mind what you are grazing on.

Day 246: Updated Sacrifice List

Yo Mammoths!

So the Mommoth read the blog this morning and decided that my sacrificial list was pretty weak. So I was told that I have to go back and come up with a better list. Evidently the first two are just not good enough for the Mommoth. In essence I know the name of my running goddess and her name is Jackie! (Love you sweetie)

Okay so here is  my new sacrificial list which I believe my running goddess will approve of:

1) Hot Dogs and buns. Now I get turkey dogs but I have been known to occasionally grab one at the odd Golden Pantry but for the marathon I am willing to sacrifice this.

2) Frozen Yogurt. I adore this treat but for the run I am willing to give it up.

3) Baked or Regular chips. To go along with the hot dog I usually have some sort of baked chip to go with it but now I am giving them up to race faster and cleaner.

4) Diet Soda. Now out of all of these sacrifices this is going to be a tough one because I am a HUGE Coke Zero fan. We have them at work and they are an awesome alternative when coffee just won't do, like when its 85 in the office as it is right now. But for the race and the goddess I will give that up too.

So there you have it Mammoths 4 better sacrifices for the Mommoth. I will talk about training later as I have a 45 minute tempo run today that the Mommoth  and I will be doing at the Y around 5 o'clock. If you are in the area come on by. I hope to see you out there on the range, stay close to a good watering hole (especially today), and as always mind what you are grazing on...because you never know when the running goddess will strike!!!

Day 247: What Are You Sacrificing?

Hey Mammoths! Long time no chat but your main Mammoth has been swamped with work and I had to make a choice, blog or work out. You see the choice I made! Its been an exciting twelve days though. My highly popular GameWerks program for kids concluded last Friday and it is probably the best three weeks of my life.

Then today I had 11 Alive News  at the Mammoth home to interview myself and the Mommoth about our upcoming Peach Tree run. I am so excited about the run, this being my first and the Mommoth's 7th, that I was overjoyed when I got the call that they wanted to come out and film us. So Ken Hamilton came out and interviewed us and then for an hour I had to run up and down my street here in Athens so he could get footage of the Mammoth stomp! Ken was a really great guy and I am glad that he came out to film us. The Baby Mammoth of course stole the show and was cute as ever in her smocked outfit, all dolled up for the Fourth of July (my favorite holiday by the way.)

So Michael from WoW Boot Camp and I had a coffee about a week ago and he asked me a question that has hung with me and thought I would share. "What are you sacrificing to make this run happen?" To be honest I had never thought of this in this way. We all make sacrifices to do things, that is called Opportunity Cost, but what am I doing to further my running goals. What sacrifices to the run Gods to I need to continue to make so that way I achieve my goal of 26.2? So I have been toiling with this notion for the past few days. So this is what I have come up with. The first one is beer! Now for those of you who know me beer is an essential part of my diet. Heck it was the 5 food group through most of college. I was king of the Mammoth Funnel but now it gets in the way of my goal. So I offer this one up to the run Gods as my first sacrifice. The second sacrifice is my sleep in time on Saturday. Now I normally get up around 5 am every morning but Saturdays I liked to sleep in until 8 am, well no longer. I will sleep in on March 12, 2012 but until that time I am going to be pushing through. My last sacrifice will be my car. From now on if it is feasible to do I will either walk or bike to work. This will allow me to continue growing my aerobic engine and allow me to get faster. Those are my sacrifices Mammoths, what are willing to give up to accomplish your goals?

Well Mammoths I need to sign out. For the rest of the week I will be signing in and discussing the upcoming Peach Tree Road Race in Atlanta. Tomorrow I will talk about my game plan and how I plan to run the race. So be careful out there roaming the range, stick close to a good watering hole, and as always mind what you are grazing on!

Race For The Cure Fundraising: The T-Shirt Shop

Hey Mammoths.

As you are aware the Mommoth and I are raising money to help fight blood cancer. We need your help! So to help us fund raise I have created a t-shirt/novelty store that has our logo on it with the Team iN Training logo on it. Feel free to browse around and buy, buy, buy! One hundred percent of the proceeds will go towards our fundraising for TNT. To go to the store please follow this link http://www.cafepress.com/WoollyMammothRunner

To go to our TNT website and see what this all about and donate please follow this link http://pages.teamintraining.org/ga/rnrsav11/woollymammothrunners

Day 259: I Knee'd New Knees!

Salutations my Mammoths!

Been a tough 9 days for your favorite Mammoth. Well actually its been the past 4 days that have been the toughest with my knees deciding that they wanted to be the most painful thing on the planet, EVER!!! I have actually had to take some of the old Voltarian steroid gel to help ease the pain and it has but it sucks that for the past two days I have not been able to exercise. Fortunately though they feel better today and tomorrow I am going to go on a slow walk for three or so miles to get them back into fighting shape. I am two weeks out from my first Peach Tree so I want to be ready to go. I am so pumped about the race and what I am going to be doing there. My mom will be there to take care of the Baby Mammoth and the Mommoth is going to join me out there. This is all terribly exciting for the Mammoth and I can't wait to get my picture taken as I cross the finish line!!!

So once again I have learned of another defeat in my bid to make the world a better place for Mammoth Runners ( I hate the word Clysdale-who wants to be a workhorse when you could be a Bad Ass Mammoth out there stomping things!). There will be no Mammoth or Athena division at either the Athens nor the Savannah 1/2 this year. I am getting a little irritated at this especially when I look at how the demographic of the sport has changed. True, the sport is dominated by Gazelles and will always be but there is a growing minority of runners who are 200+ for men and 160+ for women. It is unfair and unrealistic for me to think that I can compete with runners like Michael Williams, Jeff Ford, or Karno for that matter! I am urging the organizers of these races to rethink their position on this issue for the 2012 runs. I am a realist and understand that this cannot happen this year but there is no reason why it can't happen for the 2012 race!

Other than the knee stuff the training is going well. I am able to do six miles with little difficulty and am looking forward to upping the mileage in the days to come. My bike is fixed and ready for me to ride it to work and boot camp. I am so excited about having my bike and being healthy enough to ride it to work.

Tomorrow is a Toshiro run. We are meeting at 7 am so if you are in Athens why not come out and join us. I will be doing a slow three so if you want to come out and ramble with me feel free. So I hope to see you Mammoths out on the range, with this heat make sure you stick to a good watering hole, and as always mind what you are grazing on!

Day 268: Mammoth on the Move Come Rain or Shine

What up Mammoths? I hope this finds you well. Myself? I am having an awesome week.

Its GameWerks week and it's a time I get to spend with kids who live video games almost as much as I do. Video gaming has always been and will always be a passion of mine, so getting to spend a week with kids who want learn more about Themis awesome. The eating has been challenge. We've had pizza (sponsored by Papa Johns), we've had La Parrilla Fajitas (best in Athens-thanks Alonzo mi amigo), and today we were sponsored McDonalds. It's been tough on a Mammoth but I have been able to keep myself above water, mostly by distracting myself with games. I have had a cookie here and there but nothing like the food fests I used to have back in the day. This Mammoth is working hard to mind what he is grazing on.

I was also thinking about just how much being thinner means. Two years ago I was exhausted after each day of camp. I would come home and pass out. This year I have so much energy that I feel the need to go, go GO! One kid asked me today if I had an off button. I told him Mammoths only know one speed- fast. He then pointed out to me that Mammoths are slow so I put in NBA 2011 and schooled him on how to deal with older members of the herd! TAKE THAT YOUNG'IN!!!!

Working out has been a challenge this week. Mostly in the realm of finding time to get it in. At H3 Adam Martin taught a class on Exercise Adherence in which he said you need to pick a time to do your exercise and stick with it. I mostly workout in the mornings and when I have WoW-BootCamp! it makes it easy to keep my routine but mornings like this one make it hard to comply. I was just really tired when my alarm went off at 5 am so I made the executive decision to rest until 7 & those two hours made a world of difference in how my day went today. I still had to get in my 5 miles today so I loaded up the Mommoth and Baby Mammoth and we hit the Greenway Space here in Athens. My little herdvgets about a mile into the walk when we get caught up in a microburst of showers. Rain is falling everywhere, wind is whipping around, and the Moommoth and I are trying to get the Baby Mammoth back to the car. We finally get back to the car when it dawns on me I have three more miles to go. I kiss the Mommoth an tell her to meet me in three miles and I take off for downtown which is mostly uphill. Now Mammoths three summers ago I tried to walk from the University of Georgia to my house at about this same time and I almost died. Today, no problems in fact as I looked at my stats I saw that the hilliest part of run was my fastest. Respectively I knocked off three minutes of my pace in the final two miles of my walk. By the time I reached the rendezvous spot I was ready to RICE and hydrate-and of course blog. I am pretty proud of myself at the moment.

Well Mammoths all pride is fleeting and I have an early Boot Camp tomorrow so I am going to bed. I hope to see you out on the range rambling about, stay close to a good watering hole, and as always mind what you are grazing on.

Day 274: When Mammoths Run A 5 Mile an Hour Pace, People Pay Attention Especially When You Are Trying to Balance Right Next To Them

Salutations Mammoths.

So today at WoW Boot Camp! we had our monthly diagnostic test. Now there is nothing more that I fear than taking these tests. Even when I was in the Army I hated the AFPT because it was not an accurate glimpse of who I am. For instance if I am having a bad morning or I didn't sleep well the night before (mostly because I am worried about the test) then I am not going to do well and that can be problematic. Fortunately when I never failed a PT test but this morning I had that same old feeling. As I got up to the start line for the timed mile I was a lot more nervous than usual. Most times I get up to the line my friend Art cracks a joke and I am good to go--not today! Art cracked his joke, which was really funny and you need the context and that would take the rest of the blog so I will pass, just take my word on it it was funny, and I stood there rooted to the spot dreading to hear Michael say, "GO!", with the Rocky theme playing. It was then that I heard Michael's voice in my head saying rather Yoda like, "Trust your training." So I did. Now Mammoths this wasn't my best run ever but it was an important run for me because I did trust in my training. With Lee, Alonzo, Mark D, David D, Javier, and all the other guys cheering me on I reached deep inside and pulled out a 12:38. I thought that was a PR but it isn't, however that matters very little. What matters is that I trusted my training and even though I did not feel up to the challenge my strength and endurance go me through.

After our tests of push-ups (20) and sit-ups (51) we moved into doing some weight training. Now Mammoths I need you to envision this. We are all standing there with our hand weights in our hands and we are trying to balance on one leg while doing the exercises. It was the craziest thing I have done in a long, long time. Now the balance is important but I just looked goofy, which is okay because I was trying and that is the point. I did feel like Ralph Machio in the Karate Kid when they are doing the Crane Position on the poles but that is just my over active imagination.

The Mommoth and I are getting ourselves geared up for Team In Training. We have put out the call for ideas for fundraisers. One of the fundraisers will be later this month at Play N Trade. My main man Matt, honorary Mammoth because he is gazelle like, has said it is cool to have an event there. I will post more about it as time goes by. Also if you are interested in joining our team you need to contact me at woollymammothrunner@gmail.com soon because time is almost out and if you want to make some memories with the herd this is a good way to do it. Keep yourself posted to the blog folks because some coolness is about to go down.

Lastly, I am asking all of you who read my blog to tell at least one person you know about it. While I was eating lunch today I noticed just how overweight we have become. So I am asking you to tell one person if I am inspiring you to read my blog and ask questions. I am available to answer them through email, FaceBook, or any way I can to help someone.

Tomorrow I want to talk about the new food "pyramid" and my take on article that just came out about running and dieting that is in Prevention Magazine and republished by Active.com. 55 minute run in the morning so I hope to see you out on the range, stick close to a good watering hole (especially now that we are in summer), and as always be mindful of what you are grazing on.

Day 275: National Running Day and Team in Training Day

Greetings Mammoths and Mommoths. I am hearing that some of the lady followers of the blog like the Mommoth moniker so if you want to use it feel free, we are an egalitarian herd here.

So it was National Running day and I like every other runner in the United States took a moment to consider our running. I am very pleased with my progress from a year ago. Even though I was at Hilton Head Health I was still really in no condition to do what I am doing now. The idea of six miles would have been to daunting of a task. Now I look forward to that time out there on the range and feel comfortable doing it. So that is what I did on National Running day, most people ran but seeing how Michael from WoW Boot Camp! had me resting today I thought that I would heed his advice.

Mammoths I want to start biking to work. With gas prices being WAY OUT OF WHACK for my wallet and the fact that it is another way to get in some exercise I thought this would be a good way to get it done. My biggest dilemma at the moment is that my front wheel has a huge hole in it, so I am taking it to the bike man tomorrow to get it fixed and then I will ride the four miles home in the evening. The only thing that I have a real problem with is that I have to wear a helmet. The Mommoth insists that I wear a helmet but it messes with my beautiful fur but I will acquiesce just to maintain peace in the herd.

The Mommoth and I had our first Team In Training (TNT) meeting tonight. All two members were present. We discussed fundraising opportunities and have come up with some pretty cool ideas. One idea we have will be the most AWESOME FUNDRAISER EVER!!! If you want to get in on the ground floor and donate now you can go to our Team Woolly Mammoth Runner Page to give us a donation. If you don't know what Team In Training is check out their TNT WEBSITE HERE for more information.

Well Mammoths its been a wonderful National Running Day but now its time to say good night. Have fun out there on the range, stick close to a good watering hole, and as always mind what you are grazing on.