Intervals

I decided to start doing intervals once a week now. Baby steps at first. Today I just did a quick maintenance 3 miler with 5 intervals starting at the 2 mile mark. I was just doing a light 9 minute pace and then would run an 8 minute pace for 1 minute and then go back to 9 for a minute and did that 5 times. Felt good when I was done. Hated it while running. Oh, I did it on the dreadmill because it's so friggin' windy in LA today so I didn't feel like adding wind resistance to my run.

Bad Blogger

I'll admit it right off the top. I've been a bad blogger. I've been bad about updating on a regular basis, but sadly I don't think I've had a whole helluva lot to say in regards to running or wine-ing. Kristen and I haven't been running many races because life has gotten a bit hectic lately. Our house is under construction right now because we are adding a dining room, 3rd bedroom and a 2nd bathroom. As a result our money and our time has been gobbled up by the endeavor. That said, Kristen is running as part of a team for a half Ironman Triathlon up at Lake San Antonio this weekend so she's been training as usual. She's an animal and runs 8 to 10 miles a day so she's sure to do a kick ass job. The only other race on our horizon is the San Francisco marathon, but we haven't signed up yet. Again, slackers. I'm still putting my miles in and at the end of May the Long Beach AREC running club is starting their Long Beach Marathon training routine so I'm looking forward to cranking up the miles again. I just hope I don't drop another 12 pounds.

On the wine front we haven't made an cool trips to wine country ANYWHERE so I might want to change the blog's name to "Cheap" Wine and the finish line. We're all about the Trader Joe's and Sprout's Market weekday wine. And before you chuckle, there are some surprisingly inexpensive wines out there for daily consumption. Trader Joe's $4.99 line of wines are pretty damn decent for after work and Sprout's has Crane Lake wines on sale that are pretty tasty. Their Petite Sirah is surprisingly tasty.

So, I'd say that I'll be a better blogger, but then I'd actually have to live up to that and if you're reading this you might be saying to yourself, "Um, Mike, I don't think people really give a shit." Anyway, I hope everyone reading this is doing awesome and I'll hopefully have something interesting to say soon.

Crush!

Kristen and I ran the Seal Beach 10k yesterday and I CRUSHED my old PR by 1:52 seconds coming in at 52:11. Now I know that's not all that great for most runners out there, but I'm stoked. It was a good race, better than last year from what I'm told. They started us in waves (something they didn't do last year) and it made the beginning of the race pretty painless. Kristen ran a 42:19 which isn't a PR, but it's pretty close. She got 5th place overall for women and 3rd place in her age group. Something we found out later was that the overall winner was a woman which is pretty rare at these events. She ran something like a 33 minute 10k! Insane! And she was in Kristen's age group so she was really curious to find out who this woman was. Turns out she's an Olympic athlete living in Hawthorne originally from Nigeria. That made Kristen feel better about her 3rd place finish. I, on the other hand, came in 57th in my age group. I don't see a medal in my future any time soon I guess. Oh well.