Mini Quad draws to a close

February's Mini Quad finishes tonight. It was a quick two week spin during which I managed:

1. Two weeks of nearly 50 miles
2. New PB for the 5k and a
3. New PB for the mile...TWICE

I think the above is proof of purpose for this challenge and I thank everyone for driving me onto excel...of course excel is a relative term to the folks who run 5 minute miles and 100 miles a week.

The T shirt order has been placed and a big thankyou to MightyWeezie and Monk_Monkey for all the efforts, and to everyone who threw money in the hat at the 11th hour. I hope to be wearing mine for The Great Race on March 31st.

Good luck everyone in March.

Gotta keep moving...

So this week we moved house, no need to tell anyone how much of a pain that is. Boxes everywhere, no internet connection and a complete inability to find anything. Decided to box clever (excuse the pun) and kept my running gear in a backpack in the car. I managed to run everyday, two too many days for the week but it kept my milage up for the week into the late 40's with two PBs for the mile, although I am still way behind the speed-demons in the one mile challenge.

The new house is on the side of a hill so I now have no excuses for interval training as best I can tell from the USGS website it has a 300' elevation gain over .75 mile, which equals a 10% incline, that seems high but it is plenty steep when you're running up it.

This Sunday my long run reached 16.75 miles which was completed in 2:25:55, that puts me on target for a 3:54:25 marathon time, that's some 25 minutes more than my target 3:30, put it means I can put a stake in the ground and a target to work towards. Being in a new area means have to learn new routes but joy of joy's there is a state park trail head at the end of the street.

This month's challenge is drawing to a close, the standings at the half way point were:

Top 5 Women - 2/22/07

1 MightyWeezie

2 JazzyWx

3 patcini

4 niccinoodle

5 Run4meLife

Top 5 Men - 2/22/07

1 RicC

2 Zye

3 Magnumqt

4 e-Mac

5 TeeW

There are two days left and everything left to play for.

The Frappr map is filling out and we have pushpins from Europe, South America and Australia. Fourteen states in the US are represented so far, don't be shy folks, add a face to that name.

Finally a big thankyou to MightyWeezie and Monk_Monkey for all their efforts on the T shirt, Nike has offered us the use of their logo and the order total has been creeping up. As always a big thankyou to SnowCrash, our Race Director, for his ongoing attention.

February's Quad challenge begins

And they're off...TeeW throws down an early Gauntlet for the 1 mile with a quick 5:59, slower than his January winning time of 4:47, but no doubt that he will be working up (or down to that time) in the coming weeks.

There are three 10k times already posted and the challenge has only been running 45 minutes or so Quine1 is heading the field with 42:17 . In the 5K TeeW is in the #1 spot proving that he is more than just a sprinter.

There are over 90 challengers in each category so it will be a busy two weeks, remember this challenge only lasts two weeks to allow us to restart on March 1st.

Have fun and run long and fast and check back from time to time.

PS don't forget to add yourself to the map below, so far we have folks from North America, South America and Europe.

Calling all artists and designers...

There has been some discussion lately on the Nike+ message board about designing a T shirt for the Quadrathon Challenge, unfortunately most people, myself included, have little or no artistic talents, so we are throwing open the challenge for designers to come up with something that looks a little more professional than the shaken up etch-a-sketch mess that was my best effort. NB this photo was liberated from the web and I take no credit for it, but thankyou Jack, your talent is awesome.

And so it begins...

So if you are looking at this you probably know what it is all about, if you don't, then here is the scoop.

The Trophy Case Quadrathon!!!

Basically the idea is that each participant will be entered into 4 simultaneous Nike+ challenges.

Most Distance / Fastest 1 Mile / Fastest 5k / Fastest 10k

Each participant is ranked within each challenge.

All of the rankings are added together and the person with the lowest score will win. For example if you were first in all 4 challenges, your score would be 4 and unbeatable. If you were 1st in distance, 20th in the mile, 10th in the 5k and 5th in the 10k, you would have a score of 36. If someone else had a score of 35 in any combination of events, they would be ranked ahead of you.

The standings are updated every weekend. The final winners will have bragging rights at being some of the most versatile runners using Nike+.

So that's the scoop on the Quadrathon, other than to say that the runners vary in age from the teens to over 50, they are of widely varying ability and we are all totally addicted to our Nike+. I have to tip my hat to our Race Director; Snow Crash and to all the other runners in this challenge who make it a lot of fun.

Each week the rankings are calculated, tabulated, formulated and regurgitated and posted to this webpage.

I have no real intention of blogging, I am far too much of a lurker, but this is an easy way to use the Frappr map, although I am sure to add some milestones as I head toward the San Diego and San Francisco Marathons later this year...and with that said I completed a half-marathon training run today, in fact I ended up a just over; 14.2 miles - to get back to my front door, that's the longest I have ever run and I am chuffed to bits, I was a bit slower than I hoped 1:50:56, I blame the last mile; it's uphill. I was shooting for a 1:45:00 but it gives a great baseline to start from.

Feel free to upload your photo to the map and add a comment, it's always nice to have a face to a name.

This is the link to the Nike+ community thread for this challenge.