Most of the day I run at night. That's just how my schedule works. I work all day, I get home at about 6pm or later (yesterday it was 8pm), so we have little time until my kids bedtime. I rather spend that time with them than going to a run. So we have dinner at 7, and I go to run at 9 or 10.

I had a runner friend in college, back in Hungary, who said that running after 8pm is only for fun: your body shuts down, prepares for the night, and won't improve at all if you run after 8. I have tried to google this ever since I started running, but I was unable to find anything about this on the net. I think if this was a real issue, there certainly would be stuff about this on the net. The only issues they ever mention about night running are personal safety and possible disturbance of sleep in the night (I definitely don't have any problem with the latter).

I run on the well lit riverbank between Broad River (which becomes Congaree after Saluda River joins in) and the Columbia Canal. It's a beautiful park, with a paved trail and basically a parallel dirt trail, and mile markers, too. Late in the night, when most runners are already at home, the animals come out. Almost every night I see wild animals: a deer, a fox, a river otter, herons, geese, and in the summer, turtles and snakes (though I could live without these). You can even see warning signs about alligators, but I never saw any.

I'm an absolute fan of nature, and this park is one thing that I will miss a lot when we move from Columbia.

Yesterday, on speed training (intervals), I ran 6x400 meters (with 400 meters jogging in between), and I managed to do every single fast lap within 1:30. In fact, the last two laps were my fastest ones. This may not be a huge deal for someone else, but I was quite satisfied. (I still don't like intervals though.)

Also, I found a nice high school track relatively close to our place, and I think I will do my intervals there from now on. The track surface is better for my legs (shins and knees), and the 400 meter distance is exact. The down side is that I have to drive almost 2 miles to get there.

I only ran 3 miles today. It was sort of fun, although a little tiring. But it took almost 27 minutes. OK, I intentionally took it easy, but it still does seem like the more I train, the slower I get. I don't get it. :(

I ran 4 miles on Saturday, which I enjoyed very much, and 3 miles on Sunday, which I didn't. I'm wondering why. I was already tired when I left home, it was 45 F with an unpleasant wind chill, and I spent most of my afternoon helping a friend to fix his car, which is a relatively demanding work (physically). I just feel sort of worn out today. I wish the winter was over! Still, the weather forecast predicts temperature around freezing every single night for the next 10 days.

I asked coach Jenny on RunnersWorld.com what she thinks about training in the night. I'll write more about this later.

I've just run 5K to test out what I can do. I did 22:52. The course is far from ideal, I have to run up and down on hills and bridges, and I have to cross a busy road once in both directions, which I do by running on the sidewalk, and glancing back over my shoulder if there are no cars and I can cross.

This makes me a bit optimistic. As I wrote before, my minimum goal is 24:00, and now I proved it for myself that I can do it. In fact it is probably going to be fairly easy, unless I seriously screw up something. I will start to pace myself with a 23:00 goal time, and I will try to speed up at 2 miles, if I'll have any reserve left. I might get close to 22 minutes if everything goes perfectly.

If I thought after Tuesday, that nothing is worse than running in the cold, well, I was wrong. There is a thing: interval training in the cold. Yesterday was my first time I tried out intervals. My original plan I started to use doesn't prescribe intervals, but I read about them before, and I'm sooooo slow, I though this would be a perfect day for that. It's between a regular easy run and a race pace run on Thursday - cross training in my original plan, which doesn't seem to make much sense to me anyway, as I ride 10 miles pretty much every day.

I ran 6 times 1/4 mile, and I walked/jogged between them for 1/4 mile every time. I averaged a little below 1:30, but the last two sprints were a little more than 1:30. At the end of the sixth 1/4 mile sprint, I almost spat my lungs out. My average pace would translate to 5:47/mile; world champion runners run marathons faster than that! It's amazing, that means I couldn't follow them for more than 1/4 mile! Sort of discouraging.

I also definitely realized that I do not like interval training. I sort of remembered this from high school PE classes. My teacher was a basketball coach, and he wanted to make a basketball player from each of us. That means quite a lot of interval style training with jogging/sprinting intervals.

I'm just not very strong, not very fast. I think my VO2 max is not very high. I have a pretty good endurance, I've only been good at endurance sports, this is one reason I chose to run a marathon. I do not enjoy running like hell, even for only 400 meters.

I hate cold! I hate riding in the cold, I hate walking in the cold, and yes, I do hate running in the cold. Yesterday it was 30 F. I'm sure some will say: "What is he talking about? 30 degrees is warm.", but to me anything below 50 is cold, and anything below 32 is very cold. It's not that I am physically cold while running, not in the classic sense. I do dress up, and my internal heat production works. But my skin is cold (while I sweat), my nose is dripping, my ears hurt (or just uncomfortable, if I pull my cap on them), and slight changes of wind direction make me warm and cold all the time. I will choose 100 F any time over 32 F.

I have a rest day today, and one of the dilemmas I'm facing is about my normal daily routine. I ride my bicycle to work every day. This is my normal way of transportation, part of my work so to say. Public transportation is almost non-existent in my city, and we chose to own only one car, which my wife uses. I have a nice bicycle (Scott Speedster S60), so I can propel myself quite efficiently, but I still ride two times 5 miles every day.

I imagine. if I had a personal coach, and I asked him: "Is it OK to ride my bike for 10 miles on my rest day?", he would say no. I do feel a little sluggish after my 7 miles of running on the last two days, but what can I do? I have to get to work somehow. (OK, you got me, it is actually a national holiday today - I still go to work, because I have so much to do - but this question comes up on almost every rest day.)

So I just take it as easy as possible and ride as usual.

Today I ran 4 miles, which was supposed to be at easy pace. Since I've started training, this has been the first time I ran 4 miles without any walking in it. My time was 34:21, which doesn't sound that bad for comfortable pace, but I have to admit I was pretty tired at the end. So is it comfortable or not? The first mile sure seemed to be slow, but 4 miles with no walking is still hard for me.

I remember back in high school my longest training runs were about 8 kms (5 miles), and those didn't cause too much trouble. I'm not sure how fast I was, I never timed those runs, but it is still a little disappointing, that I'm not a better runner than I was like 16 years ago. OK, I only started to run about a month ago, what do I expect? But still...

It's always a big question: how fast should I run? Running just a bit faster seems to require a lot more energy. I can run a mile in 8:30 or 8:40 quite comfortably. I can do that at least for 3-4 miles, and I feel I can do it much longer, except I haven't tested it yet. (I don't want to fall into the trap of the terrible too's: too much, too hard, too soon.) If I run 8 min/mile, it seems easy first, but I do get somewhat tired after about 3 miles. 5K is only 3.1 miles, and my absolutely minimal goal is to do it 24 minutes on February 7th. That's only a little faster than 8 min/mile, and since I was able to run 8-minute miles in the middle of December, I thought it would be trivial to run just a little more then 3 miles in 3*8 minutes.

I'm not so sure any more. 0.1 mile is like 0.8 minute, which is 48 seconds. That's a lot! Running faster then 8 min/mile is definitely tiring for me, even if it is just a little faster. Add the fact that I have to travel more than 2 hours for the race, and that I have to be at the start line at around 8am (that is when I normally get up!), and it turns out that 24 minutes may not be that trivial after all! One thing is sure: if I can't do it in 24 minutes, then I will be terribly, TERRIBLY, T E R R I B L Y disappointed.

A few months ago, I had a strange feeling. I am already 33, in the 34th year of my life. What have I accomplished so far? Let's see, when I was 20, what did I want to have accomplished by 35?

- To have a PhD in math and to be a math professor at a university. Check.
- To have a wife and at least two kids. Check.
- To be a rock star. Well, I do learn to play the guitar... and even though sometimes I don't practice for weeks, I can play a few chords, and I did play "Away in a Manger" at Christmas for my kids. I guess I'll be just satisfied with this for now.
- To learn to speak English. You'll be the judge. (BTW, a student told me today that he transferred to my class, because the other professor, who teaches this course has an accent. I guess that's a compliment.)
- To have run a marathon. Oops!

So I realized I had less than two years. I better start training.

And so I did in December. I run about 10 miles a week now, and I'll have a 5K race On Feb. 7. And most importantly, I fell in love with running (again).

I used to run quite a lot when I was younger, mostly before 16. Then I picked it up every now and then, but never seriously, just to run a mile or two for fun. I really liked trail running, but then I got into a mountain biking scene while still in Atlanta, and that can be even more fun, because you have the same aerobic exercise as in running, but you see more. I always said, your true self only comes out when you race uphill after a hundred kilometers on the bike.

Then we moved to the middle South Carolina for a job, and the closest mountain ranges are almost 3 hours of driving from here. Riding on technical trails (roots, rocks by a river and such) is not fun for me. I gave away my (cheap) MTB in Atlanta and I bought a road bike here, but I use it for transportation only. What's the point of riding on pavement?

Running is different than mountain biking, and it is just the thing I need now. Mountain biking is much about the scenery and the adventure of being in the woods and still being able to get around quickly. Running is more about the sport, the suffering and pain, the accomplishment. I run pretty much the same route every day, so there is not much to view (although the riverbank where I run is beautiful). But getting into my shoes and gear on the evenings, tracking my time, increasing my mileage are exactly the things I like to do when I don't do math.