Ah, the daily tasks just keeping piling up. Updating my running diary is one that's been on the bottom of the list for quite some time but I want to capture some information for posterity's sake.

My running has been consistent since November or so and I decided around the first of the year that if I'm going to get out there and run regularly I might as well try and get faster. No more plodding along--I won't win a marathon but I should be striving to get faster.

So far it seems to be working. Ran a couple 10K's this year and was pleased with my time and my "long" runs (standard disclaimer: I use that term loosely) have been a minute or so faster per mile than in previous years.

I've been running consistently now since mid-November. Having a next door neighbor who's eligible to run NYC Marathon this year because he's been denied entry the last two times in the lottery certainly has its advantages.

So far so good with staying under the radar of the injury gremlins.

The first back-to-back week of 20+ miles in longer than I care to remember. New shoes, too. Saucony Trigon Ride 5's. They feel great but I wish Saucony would hire a better designer.

Mental tricks for runners—a good article on mind over matter.

So much for my "Run long on the weekends and you can skip the days in-between" theory. As this article points out, you quickly lose conditioning without regular runs. Some more eye openers from the article:

• . . . training is exquisitely specific: you can acquire and maintain cardiovascular fitness with many activities, but if you want to keep your ability to row, or run, or swim, you have to do that exact activity.
• . . . people who work out sporadically, running on weekends, for instance, will never reach their potential. [this we all knew but I hate to see it validated]
• 'When training time is limited, Dr. Coyle said, “you have to decide where you will get the biggest performance bang for the hour you spend.” The key, he found in his research, is to substitute intensity of effort for time. “A runner who’s been running doesn’t need much time to maintain his performance,” Dr. Coyle said. “But the training needs to be almost like racing.”'

• But the good news is that it takes much less time to regain fitness for a specific sport than it did to become fit in the first place. Even exercise physiologists are surprised at how quickly the body can readapt when training resumes. Almost immediately, blood volume goes up, heartbeats become more powerful, and muscle mitochondria come back.

The Personal Best column in The New York Times is a favorite of mine. Lots of articles about improving your fitness for a particular sport, often focused on running. Here's a timely one on starting out too fast in the marathon: Keeping the Gauge Off 'E'.

. . .

The Houston Marathon, one of the two marathons I've run, is well organized, has great crowd support, and starts and finishes downtown. It's popular and this January's race is capped at 17,000 runners, 2,000 more than last year. On Friday's All Things Considered, NPR ran a story [listen here] about scalpers selling their Houston Marathon slots. You know it's a good race when people are selling their bibs on eBay.

Ripping off the headline and everything—but here's five choices that are relatively painless ways to improve the percentage of organics in your diet. Straight from the article in the New York Times (which is based on the work of Dr. Alan Greene and his book Raising Baby Green)"

1. Milk: “When you choose a glass of conventional milk, you are buying into a whole chemical system of agriculture,'’ says Dr. Greene. People who switch to organic milk typically do so because they are concerned about the antibiotics, artificial hormones and pesticides used in the commercial dairy industry.
2. Potatoes: Potatoes are a staple of the American diet — one survey found they account for 30 percent of our overall vegetable consumption. A simple switch to organic potatoes has the potential to have a big impact because commercially-farmed potatoes are some of the most pesticide-contaminated vegetables.
3. Peanut butter: More acres are devoted to growing peanuts than any other fruits, vegetable or nut, according to the U.S.D.A.
4. Ketchup: For some families, ketchup accounts for a large part of the household vegetable intake.
5. Apples: Apples are the second most commonly eaten fresh fruit, after bananas, and they are also used in the second most popular juice, after oranges, according to Dr. Greene. But apples are also one of the most pesticide-contaminated fruits and vegetables.

I'd been waiting for bottled Accelerade last year during my training and kept hearing it would be available soon. It's now been out for several months and I picked up a couple bottles today at my local supermarket. I'm not running far enough to justify it but I figured having it ready when I needed it would be a good idea. At $2 per bottle it's not cheap but it tastes much better than the powder mix version.

A handy comparison chart here.

I packed up the Polar RS800sd and am shipping it back to RoadRunner Sports. The red button is too sensitive for daily wear and requires me to mash it down several times when I am running. Yes, it's has some nice features but for $460 I need it to be much better than it is. Too bad, because they now have a GPS sensor for the RS800 (instead of the W.I.N.D. sensor) and I'm sure they'll have other add-ons, too. But it was becoming more trouble than it was worth so I'll wait for the next version.

. . .

Yes, anyone can be a distance runner, but should they?

The advantages of running partners.

Finally, save yourself some money on a watch that measures distance and use this instead. Read the instructions, once you do it's a snap.

How's the RS800sd working? Not all that great:

• The OK button, the big red button you use to start/stop the exercise session, doesn't work very well. I have to mash it several times for it to acknowledge the start/stop. But at the same time the button is really sensitive to accidental presses--just brushing the face of the watch as I get into the car will often start an exercise. This happens at least three times per day. I've had three other Polar models and this is the worst in terms of usability because of the button design.
• I cannot get the watch to transfer data with Windows Vista X64. I don't blame Polar for this entirely, but it's still a bummer that I can't use my primary PC and have to use Wifey's which still runs XP.
• Calibrating the watch to the sensor is difficult--much more difficult than the S625X. Plus, the W.I.N.D. sensor wasn't easy to pair up with the watch. I finally figured it out, you need to delete all existing sensors before adding it, never mind the fact that the watch is new and had no existing sensor pairing.
• No temperature reading. My S625X provides temperature data as part of the exercise. Not a deal breaker but with the RS800sd being almost $100 more than the S625X, I don't expect to lose any features.

I'm giving it another week but right now it looks like it's going back and I'll spend the $60 for another WearLink transmitter for my S625X. Too bad because I really want to like this watch but it's too much of a hassle right now. I won't be the only one returning, either, according to the Amazon reviews . . .