Testing the new Amazon Associates blogger functionality

Amazon just released a widget which allows you to very simply place relevant links in your blog.  It's called the Amazon Product Finder.  I was just reading about Tim Ferriss' Four Hour Work week, so I will see if this works.  It seems like it did.  I just highlighted the text above, and pressed go on the Amazon associates widget to the right, and it came up with a product. 
The only downside was that it wasn't the book, it was an audio cd produced by someone else.
I'm going to try again and just say Four Hour Work week.  This time I got 28 results, but the first was an audio cd and the second and third had no image.  So not as yet impressed. 
I'm gonna try one more time.  4-hour work week.
This time I got the Audio CD.

I don't understand why the search is so crappy because when I did the search on amazon, I got the hardcover, newly released book. 








Let's see what else.  We just got a toy called 20-Q which is an automated 20 questions device.  This actually worked pretty well.  The game is pretty cool.  I thought of "bowling ball" and then the toy asked me 20 questions, and guessed it first try. 

Almost done with week 8 of 16

Good news this morning...although I have plateaud in the 183 range, my body fat % was 25.2 this morning, which is the first time it's been below 26. I did 8 miles with Sarah on Wed night (2 miles of warmup/cool down, and 16 x 1/4 mile "sprints" with 1/8 mile in between). We went about 1:46-1:57 for each of the quarters, which is just over 7 min pace to just under 8.
This weekend is 17 mile long run!

And then off to China for a week, so we'll see how running in the smog is.

heading out for 15

I am going to try a couple things different today...I only have one GU packet, so I won't be continuously refreshing my carbs, and I'm going to carry gatorade on my belt, rather than leave it on the car and drink every time I come around Greenlake (gonna try to run somewhere different today).  I have a feeling it won't go well.  On the other hand, it will teach my body to use fat instead of carbs to run...maybe.  We'll see how it goes.

1/4 mile sprints...you gotta love 'em

My running buddy Sarah was sick tonight, so I was flying solo for our interval training.  I went 14x1/4 mile sprints (7:45 pace-ish) with 1/8 mile walking in between.  Tack on a mile warm up and a mile warm down and it turned into 7.33 miles.  Average pace, 11min mile.  Funny that's about what I'm running the long runs at. 
I've put in 18 miles so far this week, including a (short) long run of 8.4mi on Sunday.  This Sunday is a 15 mile run, so next week should be coming up on 30 miles.  Cool, huh?

I'm still a bit over 180, so I've got 10-20 lbs to lose before the race, so hopefully that starts decreasing my time.

Good news and bad news

I hopped on the scale this morning and to my slight dismay I was up to 186, after running a half marathon this weekend. But then the body fat readout came on and I was at 26.1%, 90bps less than my best of 27.0% (100bps = 1%). So it may be that I added muscle from the running on the weekend. I expect that after a few more days, the incremental weight loss will again outdo the incremental weight gain from muscle and I'll start losing again.

In the category of "Ph.D's can be stupider than you might think" for the week. I'm trying to get over this cough, but I didn't want to miss another track workout. So Sarah came and got me, and we went and ran in the rain. Not only did we run in the rain, we did intervals, so there was sprinting followed by walking. By the time we were done, our shoes and socks were soaking wet, and I had mud caked all the way up my legs. I did convince her to reduce our cool down run to 2 laps, rather than a full mile. As it turns out, I am coughing less after the run in the rain than I was earlier today. Go figure.

Getting over the sickness

I haven't been writing for the last couple weeks...I caught a cold that turned into a cough and kept me from running and writing.  The good news is that I'm back in training now, I went 13.1 miles this Sunday, and a quick 5k this morning.  Over the two weeks where I wasn't running and I was not as strict on diet, I only gained about 1 lb, but it seems like I grew out of one of my smaller pairs of jeans.  So it looks like I lost muscle and gained fat. 
I hit a 2009 low of 184.2 a few weeks back, and now I'm around 185.  So 22 lbs down, and 15 more to go.  I expect that as the long runs increase, the weight will decrease.  Only about 12 weeks to the marathon.

Week 2 of training continued

I had a cold this week, so missed my Friday morning workout.  The good news is that I revived my Forerunner GPS and took it for three laps around Greenlake (9miles) today.  Unfortunately the lap database was full, so it lost part of the run, but I did the last three miles at 10:08, 10:04 and 10:15, which is significantly faster than what I had been running. 
The big conundrum is that I ran the whole run between 10 min miles all the way up to about 11:15.  The 4-hour marathon schedule says to do it between 10:40-11:10.  So I'm good there.  But my heart rate was in the 170s and 180s, which is higher than it's supposed to be for burning fat rather than carbs.  So what to do?  Keep the HR down in the 150s and go really, really slow?  or run at a comfortable pace with a higher heart rate.