Zombies, Run! Mission Big Cheese

1:00:14 hours - 4.00 miles - 15:03 min/mile

Welp, once again, I don't know what I'm doing. Just today, as I was getting ready to head for the park for my 4-mile run, I finally noticed that there are actually six Season 1 race missions—not three—a 5, 10, and 20 K for Abel Township, and a 5, 10, and 20 K for New Canton. So I decided to run the New Canton 5K today, and just tack an extra mile onto the end. Which I did. It seems to be the same events as the Abel Township 5K, only from the point of view of a couple of New Canton runners who just happened to be going to the same location as Abel. I was still Runner 5, only I was New Canton's Runner 5, which was rather disorienting, especially when we were watching the Abel Township runner (who, I assume, was Runner 5, which was me, only I was somebody else. Help!).

So, I figured what I'd do is, next week I'll do the Abel 10K, and just walk the last mile, and then the week after, I can do the New Canton 10K, and run the full race. Then I'll have two 20Ks to fit in somewhere, but whatever.

Pretty good time today. Managed to stick to my usual 15:03 minute/mile pace overall. Splits were 13:57, 15:41, 14:46, and 15:37. You can really tell which miles were uphill! Although, that first mile was half uphill and still under 14 minutes, hmm. Going out too fast, I think, but it didn't really seem to slow me down too much. I walked a bit at the end of each mile, only a minute or so. Didn't feel like I really needed it, but thought it would be a good idea anyway. My stomach was a bit wonky, but not enough to bother me. My left hip got a twinge in it for the last mile or so, don't know what's up with that. Anyway, good run overall. Might try to do four runs next week instead of three, but I don't know where I'll fit them in. Maybe Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, if I can avoid the Wednesday Curse, plus Saturday at the park. I won't be able to run on Thursday due to a medical appointment, so we'll just see how it goes.

Zombies, Run! Radio Abel Season 1

31:36 minutes - 2.03 miles - 15:33 min/mile

I had planned to run three days this week: Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday, but as usual, Wednesday was a bad day, so I ended up doing my second run today, on Thursday. (I should just stop scheduling runs on Wednesday, then I won't be disappointed when I don't make it.) I feel like I've been off forever, but it's only been two days. Since I've been running 4–5 days a week, I don't usually have two days off. Running three days a week feels like I've been sloughing off, although I always trained for my marathons and half marathons three days a week, so it shouldn't seem so bad. But I've had a stressful week and I've been skipping yoga and meditation, too. I just sort of feel like everything's falling apart. I've got a doctor's appointment today, maybe that will help.

Anyway. I felt slow today, and it looks like I was a bit slower than usual. I ran to Radio Abel and played Hawkwind's Warrior on the Edge of Time. I did a quick estimate of how long the album was, and it came to over 40 minutes, so I didn't run the whole album. There was one zombie chase, at 28 minutes, which I evaded. It helped that I'd decided to put my speed increase down to 10%!

I got up this morning at around 6:40 and didn't get out to run until almost 7, but the morning was cool. Sun's coming up a bit later now anyway, so I might just move my morning wake-up notification up to 6:30 AM.

Zombies, Run! Radio Abel Season 1

31:07 minutes - 2.06 miles - 15:05 min/mile

Well, that didn't work out. I intended to start the 10K training program this morning, so I enrolled in the program and started the app—and then found out that it works by attaching the training program to a mission, so the training sessions aren't missions in themselves. I accidentally downloaded and started running Season 2 Mission 1, then I went Ack! this isn't right and stopped the mission while I tried to decide what to do. There was no point running the training program along with Season 2—the whole point of the training program was to get me to 10K so I could run that before starting Season 2. I thought about re-running the Season 1 missions, or interval missions, or something; but then I decided there was really no point doing the training program, if it isn't its own separate missions. I can easily train up to 10K in a couple of weeks using Radio Abel or the supply missions or intervals. I've already done the 5K (3 miles), so if I do 4 miles this week, then 5 miles next week, I can do the 10K the week after without too much trouble. 

As for the 20K, forget it. This is getting way too complicated. I'll try to work it in later, just to play it, but I'm going to go ahead and start Season 2 after the 10K.

So, anyway, for today's run, I played some more of Radio Abel Season 1. For timing, I decided that most albums are around 30 - 40 minutes, so I'd just play an  album and run till it was done. This morning, it was Pink Floyd's Animals album. I actually started the run a little bit into the album, because I was playing it while I did a couple of warmup laps, and then while I was standing around trying to decide what to do about my run. But the rest of it was pretty close to 2 miles, so that worked out well. I think I had zombie chases turned on, but there weren't any during this run, so that was fine. I kept up a good pace and ran the whole way.

It's fun to have Jack and Eugene say, okay, here's the next song, and then hear Pink Floyd. I guess in my universe, Radio Abel is AOR!

Zombies, Run! Mission Ultra-Violet

46:10 minutes - 3.17 miles - 14:35 min/mile

Today I ran the 5K race mission, Ultra-Violet. I went to the park to run it, since it was a longer run, and distance-based, so I wanted the GPS to be more accurate. And also because it was more fun! I wore my belt with the water bottle, even though it was a short run, to make sure I stayed hydrated. The weather was cool-ish, around 70 F, but the sun was out and beating down on me when I wasn't in the shade, so I'm glad I had the water.

There were two zombie chases, at 12 and 29 minutes. The first one was just as I was finishing the lower loop, and I was getting tired from going uphill and looking forward to taking a little walk once I reached the parking lot, and then—zombies! I tried, but I couldn't evade them and had to drop supplies. That's the first time since my first run, but oh well. Second one came just as I was at the turnaround at the top of the hill, so got to run downhill and evaded them easily.

My splits were 13:55, 15:04, and 14:30. Huh, no wonder I couldn't evade that first zombie mob, I went out pretty fast. Cool that I managed to keep my second mile near 15 minutes, since that one is all uphill. I'm pretty pleased with my time.

Now, to figure out how to manage the 10K. The Zombies, Run! app has a beginner's 10K training plan, three days a week for eight weeks. I may do that. Hm, if I start on Monday, it will get me to 10K on October 1.  Couple of weeks later, I can run the Virtual Race 10K on Sat October 22, then start training for the Disneyland Half Marathon on Monday the 24th. Once I'm trained up for a Half Marathon, I'll be able to do the 20K, and then finally I'll be ready to start Season 2 near the end of January! (Or maybe I'll start sneaking in Season 2 missions on the in-between weeks—I don't think I'll mind too much doing the races out of order.)

Zombies, Run! Season 1 Interval #1

27:02 minutes - 1.81 miles - 14:53 min/mile

Blah. Almost blew it off today. I didn't sleep well last night and felt so groggy when I woke up this morning, I decided to heck with it and stayed in bed. But after half an hour or so, I went ahead and got up and ran. Pretty good time, despite feeling yucky. I used the Interval Training mission again, with Interval #1, which had some 30 second sprints and a couple of 1 minute sprints followed by 1 minute walks. It went pretty well, although some of my sprints weren't very sprint-worthy. I walked a couple of laps before and after the mission, but not on the app.

Didn't run Wednesday this week, either. Another night I lay awake for hours in the middle of the night and slept in late instead. Meh. Four days a week of running is enough.

Zombies, Run! Interval 2

32:29 minutes - 2.02 miles - 16:07 minutes/mile

Today, I decided to try one of the interval training missions. There are three already set up, and you can also design your own. I did Interval #2, because it had walk intervals following all the sprints. It was basically jog for 1.5 - 5 minutes, sprint 30s, walk 1 minute. I was a bit slow today, but I think that's mostly because the mission was 25 minutes and I left it running while I walked a couple of laps to cool down and to get my distance up to 2 miles - my splits were 15:19 and 16:37.

The mission was to clear out a nest of zombies: I'd run out to the nest, get a bunch of zombies to come after me, and lead them back to the kill box, where people with rifles could pick them off. I like that even when you're just doing intervals, there's a story to keep things interesting.

Zombies, Run! Radio Abel: Season 1

32:53 minutes - 2.12 miles - 15:32 minutes/mile

Well, I was all set to start Season 2 today, but when I brought up the next mission, there was a message saying they recommended completing the Race missions before starting Season 2. The races say they are the "hidden story at the end of Season 1," and there are three of them: 5K, 10K, and 20K. Erm. 5K I can do, although I'd rather wait until Saturday and do it at the park. 10K... probably, if I go slow and take walk breaks (and turn chases off). 20K, though, is pretty far without training up to it. So I'm not sure how I'm going to handle that. I really want to run them and hear the story! I wonder if you can run them in sections? Radio Abel has Resume/Restart buttons, maybe the Races do, too. That would be okay, I could stretch out the 20K over three or four days. Even split the 10K in half.

Meanwhile, I had to decide what to do today, if I wasn't going to run the 5K. The app has various other kinds of missions you can run, besides training missions—air drops, supply runs, interval training—and there, down at the bottom (off screen if you don't scroll down, so I never noticed it before) was Radio Abel! There's a Radio show for each season that you can play and just run as long as you like, so I decided to run to that, and just do 2 miles. The only inconvenience was that the app doesn't tell you when you're done, so I had to judge for myself when to pull out my phone and check how far I'd gone, but I guess after doing all these 30-minute runs, I was able to estimate fairly well. There weren't any zombie chases, which was fine with me, I just ran till I was done. Felt a bit slow but my pace wasn't too far off.