Scraggly, The KISS Method, and a Breakthrough Workout

My beard is itchy.  I'm a mere 3 weeks into No Shave November and am contemplating shaving.  I want it gone because I feel dirty.  Am I gaining anything from keeping it?  No, unless you count the horrified stares from little children asking their parents "what happened to that man's face?"

Day 20 - considering giving up.

Day 20 - Side Shot

Obviously, my beardiness is not thick enough to consider it an actual beard.  Hence my desire to give up.  However, I figure that decision will be made when I finally get to see my girlfriend on Wednesday for the first time in 11 weeks!  If she deems it unkissable, I will rid my face of this unkempt, disheveled mess on my face.

In non-beard related news, running is fantastic.  I did 16mi yesterday at 7:30/mi average and felt pretty damn good the whole time.  Yes, I had some tough spots in there where I didn't want to continue running, but that is the beauty of out&back routes, I had to get home and the fastest way to get there was running.  I don't quite understand some people's hatred for out&back runs.  They are honest and simple, a principle which often gets overlooked in triathlon training.  Everyone is always so excited about the latest gadget and how it will make their training more precise and then make them faster.  However, I've always tried to cling to a simple motto that I learned in high-school hockey: The KISS Method, or Keep It Simple, Stupid Method.  I've tried to adopt it in my run-specific training lately and I think it has been working well.  If I feel good, I run fast and far.  If I need to recover, I run slow and short.  I have also been paying more attention to my recovery, because these good workouts will only help me if I can stay healthy and avoid injury.  Lots of stretching and strengthening, core work, yoga, compression, sleep, healthy food, etc. 

My next race will be a 5k on December 3 in Lansing.  The Scrooge Scramble is the name of it.  I want an improvement in my 5k time from last month (a measly 18:26).  I have high hopes, especially considering I had a breakthrough track workout just this past Tuesday.  I did 5x1000 on 2'30" rest, hoping to be faster than I was last month when I did the same workout.  I ran all five under 3:33/1000m which correlates to about 5:40/mi pace and they felt easy.  Last month I was struggling real hard and barely running 3:40 for the reps, so an improvement of 7s is huge over this distance in only 4 weeks!

I'm really excited to continue running.  I'm going to try to string together a few weeks of 50mi and see how I hold up.  I'll let you know how it goes.