The Leotian Blog

As Seen On A Car Today...

2009-06-05T15:47:00.002-05:00

I saw a funny combination of bumper stickers on a car today. It featured a larger sticker that said "Tattoed people are better than non-tattoed people because they are cooler and they can kick your ass." On the other side of the trunk was one of those "Coexist" stickers.

I'd say that driver may need to make sure and have their psychiatric meds close at hand to deal with that sort of schism. :-)

More Economics

2009-05-12T22:35:00.002-05:00

I found out today that my dry cleaners actually cuts hours for their workers during the summer months because there is less dry cleaning to be done. This doesn't sound entirely logical to me, but I suppose with vacations and school being out (teachers not needing their "school clothes?"), the customer base is smaller. Still, this fact surprised me. You learn something every day, if you keep your ears and eyes open. :-)

Yeah, I ran a little...a big 25 minutes and 2.5 miles, just to restart the Tuesday recovery run. I wasn't sore at all after yesterday's circuits, so either it was an easier workout than usual, or I'm in very slightly better shape. I'll go with the easier workout theory. :-)

Also did some cross training by mowing the yard, so it was a big day.

I finished Lawrence Block's "Small Town" yesterday, and I had a fun time reading it. There was a fair amount of pretty kinky behavior among the characters, so be aware of that, but the main story was pretty fun to work through regardless. It's a murder mystery / psycho killer sort of book, but there is a great deal of humor and some interesting characters while you're figuring out WhoDunIt. Recommended if you're into the genre (but beware of the sex if you're of a sensitive nature :-) ).

Circuitry

2009-05-11T09:36:00.002-05:00

After a night of tossing and turning (you never do just get one of those, do you?) due to the dead air conditioner downstairs, I dragged myself down for circuit training. I figured it would end up being just fine, even with the medicine ball exercises. :-)

Gilbert has added a bunch of new medicine ball exercises to the regular circuit training stuff, and I must say, it's a good addition. It's Ab-Tastic, even if I did forget that we were supposed to do 20 reps of each exercise. I did 20 on one of them, but the others were 10 counts for us. The weirdest one is the "donkey," where we fling the medicine ball with our feet. Sounds odd, and it is, but I got the hang of it today. After 3 circuits, we did a round of a high knee deal with medicine ball, followed by a throw and a short sprint before repeating the deal. Not too bad, really.

No fast feet or hopping today, for which I was grateful. :-)

I had a pleasant return run (with one walk break on the bridge) with Colleen and Whitney, and then we were done. Hung out and had a typical scattered conversation with Gilbert about this weekend's long run routes, and then I was done. Again, it was just great to be able to hang out with my Gazelles buddies. I need to remember that the social aspects of the herd are almost as important as the physical ones.

Hopefully, the guys will get the new AC installed and running today, and we can enjoy a nice cool evening of sleep tonight!

Happy Mother's Day

2009-05-10T15:59:00.002-05:00

Yep, it's that day again. Cards sent, flowers delivered, gifts enjoyed. Kids surprised by the gifts that were "from them." Just another Mother's Day. :-)

On a selfish note, I feel very good after yesterday's little run. Perhaps the body is adapting faster than I thought? We'll know more after tomorrow's circuits and more workout. The medicine balls are being unleashed upon us on Monday, so that will be interesting, to say the least.

Well, Tiger's not charging at the Players Championship, so I guess I'll enjoy the latest book I've started instead.

Steamy Running

2009-05-09T11:58:00.003-05:00

No, it's not some bodice ripper of an entry. This is not the story of two runners noticing each other on the trail as they pass by, only to realize that they were destined for each other, with a resulting passionate encounter and a life spent together forever after. Sad that it is not the case, but that's the breaks. Maybe that book needs to be written. Or has been... :-)

Anyway, today was another brick in the wall, as I scored 4.5 big miles on a warm and humid morning on the trail. Average pace with water stops was 10:00/mile, which is pretty slow. The actual running bits were in the 9:00-9:20/mile range, so maybe I'm closer to being a real runner again than I currently believe.

It was cool to see Sue, Monique and Courtney as I finished my little tour. They, like me, are coming back to the herd, but right now, they're a little further along in the process. I got a chance to catch up a bit with Pete and Jan this morning, and that was a nice highlight.

For some reason, the stretching pavilion/RunTex Annex now is festooned with a bunch of boxing paraphernalia. A couple of heavy punching bags are swinging from the ceiling, along with two other sets of smaller punching bags ("Speed bags" and that one that is attached to floor and ceiling on stretchy cords). I guess there's a new fitness purveyor sharing the space that was sort of the Gazelles clubhouse. No big deal, I guess. I pushed around the big punching bag, and I can't understand how boxers don't break all the bones in their hands beating on those things. I know they tape their hands and wear gloves, but man!

Haircut Economics

2009-05-08T15:39:00.002-05:00

Today, I found myself pondering the current state of the economy. All those businesses cutting folks left and right, some closing their doors entirely, and yet some continue on unaffected. I understand some of this. Some I do not.

I understand that some things keep on rolling: barbershops (although I suppose some people stretch an extra week between haircuts to save a little money), gas stations (gotta have gas, but then maybe we're all limiting our driving a bit?), funeral parlours (springing for the mid-line or budget caskets might be cutting into their bottom lines, though).

I understand that we are keeping our cars a year or two or three longer than we once might have, causing car dealerships and manufacturers to have some pain. I understand that we stay in our homes or apartments instead of moving up, which causes problems with realtors and homebuilders. We might even eat out at restaurants less, which has the trickle-down effect of hurting that industry and waiters and bartenders.

What I don't understand is anyone who'd think this is a good time to open a designer clothing boutique. This is, of course, tempered by the total irrationality of anyone buying a handbag that costs more than our monthly mortgage payment, a $500 shirt, or $1,000 shoes. In my opinion, at any rate. :-) And how is Neiman Marcus even still in business after the last 5 years of economic turmoil? I don't get it.

Rant over.

I'm looking forward to seeing some peeps tomorrow for a gentle medium-long run. Last night's recovery run did the trick. I'm not sore or stiff today, so that's a good thing.

Recovery Running

2009-05-07T22:00:00.002-05:00

Ah, yes. Another morning of waking up and feeling pretty beaten up and sore, but by the evening, I felt good enough to sneak out for a nice and easy recovery run. I got in something like 3.5 miles at about 10:00/mile, which is very meager, but it served the intended purpose. My legs felt much better at the end of the little journey. Stiffness worked itself out, and I felt fairly fluid as the few miles went by.

This was just another small step on the way back, but it felt pretty good to be out there in the nighttime humidity...just me, the full moon, the occasional barking dog, and my thoughts. Hmmmm, isn't that what I liked about running back in the day? Isn't that the reason that we do this? It's not so much for the stopwatch (although I'll get back to that in a month or two) as it is for the electrical machine lying between the ears. Just like dreaming lets our subconscious work out some of the demons that plague us in everyday life, running allows the mind to roam freely, and we end up feeling way better than before the run started. Zen.

Oh, yeah, Philip Kerr is a new author (new to me, at least) and I've read three or four of his books in the last week or two. Check him out. His genres are wildly eclectic, as I've read a historical fiction concerning World War II ("Hitler's Peace"), a science fiction sort of thriller set in the future ("Second Angel"), a funny and interesting caper novel ("A Five Year Plan"), and a work of science and anthropology ("Esau"). He apparently can write just about anything. I'm trolling the library stacks of Austin seeking his other books. More as I find them out.

Tiny Ladders To The Sky

2009-05-06T09:55:00.003-05:00

Wow, that's a pretty poetic title! Today was the little reverse ladder interval workout at Austin High School. In my case, three sets of 600m, 400m, and 200m intervals with 200m jogs between and then a 2:00 rest between sets. I found my way to a new pace group, and we clicked off our intervals at a pretty constant 8:00/mile sort of pace. That's my race pace from January's 3M Half Marathon, which is pretty humbling. I have a long way to go to get back to that sort of racing.

At any rate, the workout went much better than the circuits on Monday, and even my cooldown run back to RunTex was of a much higher quality than Monday. Slowly, it gets better. For the record, it took the entire warmup time and drills before my sore and stiff legs felt like something other than board-like attachments to my otherwise human body. :-)

Thanks to Eric and my pace posse from this morning for letting me join their crew!

Cross-training today included lawn mowing and edging once I got home. Woo hoo!

SORE!!!

2009-05-05T12:00:00.003-05:00

I woke up Tuesday feeling like someone had beaten me about the legs and hips. Them circuits sure can make a man feel his age! [sic]

Anyway, I did some gentle stretching throughout the day, which gave temporary relief. This will be a regular occurrence until I get back into shape, but it's not a huge bother. I guess I'd rather have this feeling than the feeling of moping around telling myself I ought to get back to running.

No running today, but I plan to add Tuesdays back into the mix next week.

Circuitry (a Gazelle returns...)

2009-05-04T11:18:00.004-05:00

Man, I'm out of shape! Well, I'm in a shape, but that shape is blobular, and I've got work to do.

This morning, I finally got out there to rejoin the herd after quite a long hiatus. Circuit training was on the training menu, and there were a lot of Gazelles coming back this morning as well. Courtney, Frank and Brad sneaked in, and it was funny to see Gilbert's expression as he noticed all of us sort of hiding behind people before the workout started.

The warmup was just fine and dandy, the drills left me a bit winded, and then it was time to get going. I got through three circuits of the usual stuff, and started on the fourth circuit. After that, it was time for "extra stuff," and it was hard! For me, at least. We did lots of hopping, which always gets me. Then, it was time for the 15/30/45/90 ab deal, and I hung in there okay on that. The hardest one is at 45 degrees. Aiiieeeeee! We finished off with Fast Feet, and I barely made it through that. I think my HR was somewhere above 1,000 bpm in there. :-)

I had to sit down for a while after all that, and then trundled back to RunTex as a solo act. I caught up with Eric on the way, and we made a little team as we pushed each other back to the house. Almost literally pushed. Almost.

So, it was very nice to get back out and start the journey back to running shape. There were quite a few people who chatted with me, and I remember now why I love the Gazelles so much. As I've said many times, you join the Gazelles for Gilbert and the workouts, but you stay because of the other members of the herd. Once again, I found this to be true.

Now, I just have to do my running, restart (for the umpteenth time) some sort of gym workouts or core work, and eat a little better. Gee, sounds like no big deal! :-)

Lonely Fartleks

2008-04-23T23:12:00.003-05:00

Today was different because of Mary Anne's work schedule. I had child transport duties this morning, and had to create my own solo fartlek workout instead of rolling around the lake with the herd.

This morning, I visited Gold's again, for core and upper body weights. Even though it appeared that I was lifting weights with stick-figure arms, I completed a single set workout of everything at various reduced weight and reps. Pleasant soreness was the result. Again, they didn't call my bluff and kick me out as some sort of interloper, so I guess I'll just have to keep going.

This evening, after delivering Sarah to All-City Band rehearsals down south at Covington M.S., I decided to use the intervening time before going back to pick her up by running a fartlek workout around LBLake. I arbitrarily chose a 10 minute warmup, 10 x 1:00 fartleks with 1:00 rest, and then cooldown running from the end of that back to my starting point. The Congress Ave. loop was my turf tonight. It was 85 degrees, according to the trusty car thermometer, but it felt much more pleasant than that on the trail. I guess it was a combo platter of lake effect, breezes, and copious shade along the route. Nice, though.

Without a gang to bounce paces off of, I just picked things up on the accelerations to some perceived level of effort, and then backed off, after that initial warmup. I'm sure I had that focused frown going during the tougher bits, but I was happy that I pushed through and finished the entire workout as I had mapped it. I ended up with something like 7:40/mile pace on the 10 minutes of accelerations, and 9:20/mile or so for the entire loop, including cooldown and warmup miles. 4.82 miles, 44:32. Avg HR was up there, but lower than it was for the 400s last Wednesday.

I saw Carrie out there, putting in some recovery miles just 10 days after her AZ Ironman dream race. I told her it was too early to be out there already, and she just shrugged. Those triathletes are just a different breed, I guess. You need to read her blog about that race. She was amazing!

So, another day of honest physical work, another drop in the physiological bucket, another baby step back towards fitness. Onward.

HR Recovery Running, again

2008-04-22T20:58:00.002-05:00

Today, my legs didn't feel nearly as destroyed as they did last week after the 400m repeats. I'll take that as a sign that I'm creeping back into shape. Slowly.

I finally got to the gym today, and I felt like an impostor. However, no one asked me politely (or impolitely) to leave, so I guess it was okay for me to be there. :-) I just cruised through an introductory gym routine with core and leg weight evercises, using lighter weights or lower reps or both from my past gym days. Just one set all around, too. I wanted to get there to reacquaint myself with the routine and to let my body know that we were going to get back to work. No rebellious muscles snapped, and I'm sort of looking forward to future visits.

Tonight, I rolled out into the 'Hood for another exciting HR recovery run. Again, my goal was to run 30 minutes at a very controlled overall HR for a true recovery effort. I was successful. My legs felt pretty good from the start, and I was able to get a little more distance at a little quicker pace and a little lower overall HR than last Thursday's similar effort. Victory! The stats were still quite modest: 2.82 miles, 30:42 time, 10:53/mile pace, and avg HR 152. For me, 152 is sort of loafing. For Frank, I think, it's close to 10K HR pace. Such are the vagaries of cardiovascular numbers.

I am starting to look forward to running again, and that's a big step for me. Tomorrow, I have to craft a fartlek workout on my own here in the 'Hood due to home responsibilities, so that will be a bigger test of my willingness to work out than today's efforts.

Mile Repeats

2008-04-21T08:59:00.002-05:00

This morning was pretty muggy, but it was still reasonable conditions that we'll be begging for in a few months. It's just such a drag when the last nice cool spell comes and goes. Sigh...

Gilbert was back today after his London trip and his subsequent trip to meet Chuck Norris. Really. Apparently, the Chuckster was a nice guy, and knew all about Gilbert, so G had a very nice experience meeting one of his childhood heroes. That's a good thing. I'm glad that Norris did some research and he seemed to enjoy meeting and talking with Gilbert.

As for today's running, we went for mile repeats on the traditional rolling course at Zilker Park. I found my new group once we got there, and settled in for 3 repeats. I'm still slowly returning to training, but I turned in respectable times of 8:00, 7:56 and 8:10 for my three laps. Way off of my PB for this workout, but not too bad today. My HR numbers weren't pegged like they were with the 400s last week, so that was a sign that I was pacing better today.

I had a nice relaxed run back to RunTex with Courtney, Marty and Mary Ann(?), and spent some time getting in a good stretching session once we were done. My hamstrings were pretty tight and sore, so I'll dig into those later on with the foam roller, etc.

For the day, about 6.8 miles. I feel better every day that I stay on my running path, and I hope that things get better sooner rather than later.

Slooooooowwwwwwww Runnin'

2008-04-17T21:08:00.003-05:00

Today was the first HR recovery run since I've returned to the fold. And it was a wildly eye-opening experience. What is a HR recovery run? Well, there is some discussion amongst training peeps that you should stick very carefully to a low HR range for recovery runs, even if it means almost crawling along on your run. There is further discussion about what "low" means in relation to HR. It gets to be pretty confusing and contradictory if you go between the various HR running gurus.

However, I've decided on what "low" means to me, given my current max HR and waking HR, and for me, that means trying not to get too far over 155. For me, that's around 60-65% range (my max is a scary 202 bpm, and my waking pulse is 48). Not so long ago, I could cruise around at that HR range at a running pace of somewhere around 9:30/mile, and sometimes quicker if the weather was nice and chilly. Tonight? Well.....

I was way too stiff and sore this morning to go out for an early run, so I gently stretched, did some foam rolling, and worked out some of that junk instead. After the day had run its course, I eased out at 7:15pm for 30 minutes of carefully monitored HR running. And off I went. Keeping a careful eye every couple of minutes, I managed to find the pace that kept the HR number at 155 or below, for the most part. Imagine my surprise when my first mile "split," if one can call it that, was 10:57. Wow! Continuing on, I turned in a second mile in 11:21 (some hilly stuff that forced even more slowdown on the inclines), and a last .77 miles at 10:39 pace.

Totals were 2.77 miles at an average of 11:00/mile. Golly! Sure, my average HR was 155 for the full run, so I did that properly, but that's darned slow compared to just a few months ago, before the dark days of late February and March. There is much work to be done, that's for sure.

On the good side, I stuck to the required workout plan, discovered some things about my current shape, and my legs felt pretty good once I was finished. A nice stretching session later, and all things considered, it was a good workout.

So, I have a ways to go to recover my former fitness, but it will come. I have to become reacquainted with the gym, too, so that I can burn off the anatomical goo more efficiently. I'll keep you apprised of my progress. I will not mention things like my weight, but let's just say that when you keep eating like a marathoner, but you are training like a truck driver, certain things happen to you. They are mostly not great. :-) Time to kick up the old internal physiological furnace once again!

Return to Speedwork

2008-04-16T08:38:00.002-05:00

Let's see...Monday I was pretty stiff and sore from my modest effort at the Bun Run 5K, but as they like to say, it was a good kind of sore, earned from actual effort. Anyway, I figured 2000m repeats probably weren't the best idea given my current state of (non-) fitness, so I did some recovery running instead. 40 minutes of nice and easy running on the trail, and by the end of the run, my legs were feeling better. Just over 4 miles, but for now, that's just fine.

Today, Wednesday, I rejoined the herd for some speedwork. I decided before I drove down for the workout that I would purposely shift groups, and I planned on doing 8 repeats, maybe 10. So, when Bernard said that 10 was the minimum number of repeats, I was already a little bit off kilter. Still, the group I hung with was just perfect for me, and everyone took turns leading the pack, so it was a communal effort. We were really solid on pacing, knocking the 400m repeats out at an average of 1:51/400m, with a slow lap of 1:53 and a fast lap of 1:50 for the first 11 repeats. On the 12th and final repeat, I picked it up a bit to 1:44. I wouldn't have done 12, but no one else was stopping at 10, so I sort of was shamed into staying with the pack for an even dozen. I'd point out that 10 is an even number, too, but Monique was persuasive, and our pack of 6 runners stuck together.

I ran back with Frank, and all in all it was a nice return to the morning workouts. It was fun to see everyone, and now I can approach future workouts with joy instead of trepidation.

Except for my HR being much higher for a slower pace, I felt okay out there. My legs felt a little clunky, but that's to be expected. It'll come back to me, but I must be patient. I figure by June I'll be more or less back to normal. Whatever "normal" is... :-)

Schlotzsky's Bun Run 5K

2008-04-13T11:22:00.003-05:00

He's baaaaaaack...we hope. Anyway, after months of moping and rib injury and general malaise, I'm creeping back out on the roads and trails to see about turning myself into a shape that is not round. :-)

Mary Anne's work schedule has caused me to miss a ton of Gazelles workouts, too, so that created different mental stresses. You know how it goes...I'm way slower than I was a few months ago, so I get embarrassed about going to speed workouts, so maybe I don't go to the speed workouts because I'm slower, and so I don't get faster because I don't go to speed workouts because I'm slower. I know the logic is twisted, but our minds do strange things to us from time to time.

At any rate, I did get out yesterday for a super easy 3 miles of jogging before the Stretch-A-Thon with the Gazelles, and my legs didn't explode or anything. So, I did the only logical thing, which was to walk over and sign up for the Bun Run held this morning. I tend to run this race every year, and I like the shirt, so what the heck? Also, I had no expectations of time for the race, and could just run it for fun to get my psyche jump-started.

This morning, after rolling down to park near RunTex, I did some very gentle warmup stuff. I wasn't even in shape (I thought) to join the herd for the usual warmup, so I walked for 20 minutes or so, did some drills, stretched gently, and finally did some very easy jogging. No strides, but I figured I'd be running nice and relaxed, so who needs strides for that?

I eased into the mob about 30 yards back from the start line, but moved up a bit in the crowd when I realized that surely I was faster than most of the folks I saw around me there. The weather was a perfect crisp and clear 48 degrees, and I was fairly serene as the wheelchairs went off, the National Anthem was sung, and Evel blared the starting horn for us. No worries. Just go out and see what happens.

So, I did. I weaved my way through the crowds ahead of me as I crossed the starting line, passing walkers, very slow runners, and those who went out fast and quickly came to a crawl (young runners, mostly). The course has changed this year from the traditional Dog Pound loop, presumably due to the Arts Festival that has taken over Cesar Chavez street this weekend. Thus, we zigged and zagged over to Congress, and did that sneaky climb up Congress to the Capitol. I saw Rich and Banjo right at the one mile marker, and noted a sedate 8:55 for that mile. Okay. Traffic caused some of that, and I felt pretty good, so I eased into the next running gear, and moved on.

Mile 2 featured all of the hills on this course. Up 12th Street, where scads of folks slowed to a walk, up San Jacinto , which had some bumps for us, and then the turn west onto 15th, where the last significant hill came and went. Even in my current (lack of) shape, I was pleased to note that I was passing folks left and right. That's encouraging. We turned south at Lavaca and then tucked into the Capitol grounds for a bit. Mile 2 came and went, and I was happy to see a second mile split of 8:06. It was a harder mile than the first, but I felt about the same, so it was all good.

Except for quick little hill at the Governor's Mansion early on, Mile 3 was mostly downhill and/or flat, so one could expect to pick up a little time here. I continued to roll through the crowds, and I don't remember very many, if any, people passing me during this part of the race. Just sort of relaxing into a higher turnover, I picked it up a bit, and soon enough we were back at the First Street Bridge and the 3 mile marker. This year, the course finished on the bridge, so it was a bit easier to concentrate on the finish line since it was right in front of us from farther back (no corners to negotiate late in the race for a change). I did a modest finishing kick over the bridge, and was pleased to cross the line at a decent pace. Done!

Mile 3 was 7:34, and the 0.11 mile finishing kick was 0:46 for a 6:58/mile pace. Way slower than in years past, but much faster than I had expected. Final time 25:21, or 8:09/mile pace. I've run half marathons faster than that pace, so I'm way off my game, but it was comforting to be able to turn in a respectable race coming off of basically no training.

I hung out afterwards with Frank, Larry, Ava, Alicia and other folks, and in ways that they might not recognize, that simple activity made me feel much better. I forget how much a part of my social network that the Gazelles are. When I drift away from the herd for a while, I miss the human interaction, and that can snowball into all sorts of grumpiness on my part. Perhaps I've learned a lesson...again?

At any rate, as I told Frank, my goals for the next 3 months are to get into shape so that I can begin White Rock marathon training in late July. Shouldn't be a problem, but I have let myself drop way off my former fitness. I'll get back to the Gazelles workouts, albeit at a slightly slower pace than usual, and fight my way back into shape. No other grand pronouncements except to remind myself that running improves most aspects of my life, both mentally and physically, and when I drop off of that, I'm a lesser person for it.

Onward!

Pre-Race Rituals, v.2008.01 [Entered 1/28/08]

2008-01-26T21:51:00.000-06:00

Saturday morning was the usual super easy jogging with the gang, 30 minutes, then strides. We followed that up with the full out stretching ritual. The campers were all in fine spirits as we awaited the downhill 3M fest on Sunday. Lots of easy laughter as we did our last fine-tuning. For the day, a mere 3 and a quarter miles. The rest of the day was spent chilling out, messing about the house, playing some guitar, and getting all my stuff ready for the race. Now let's go run that thing!

When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth [Entered 1/28/08]

2008-01-26T21:20:00.000-06:00

Once again, I've let the blog slip my attention. Oops. I'll catch you up on the running stuff in a later post, but right now I need to let you know how the Brothers Van Halen, the Lead Singer, and the Baby Van Halen did in concert on Thursday night.

Frank and I met at his casa Thursday afternoon, and after an easy drive, a healthy pre-concert dinner at Hooters (it was for the wings, man...seriously! :-) ), and the remaining journey to the AT&T Center in San Antone, we were ready to rock. Judging from the crowds waiting on line to enter the auditorium, the age range was weighted more heavily to the late 30's and older crowd, but a sizeable number of teens and younger adults was mixed in as well. We were sure better dressed than we were in the old days when we'd go to an arena rock show!

Once the doors opened, a roar shot up from the crowd. I'd say the audience was a little stoked. After the obligatory t-shirt purchase, we settled into our seats and awaited the night's entertainment. The stage looked pretty cool, with a giant video screen behind the band, all the speakers above the stage with an impressive lighting rig suspended above, and an S-shaped runway coming off the main stage that surrounded a tidy piece of the crowd on the floor. So far, so good.

The opening act was one of the many Marley children, grandchildren, or nephews that are out there performing. It was pleasant reggae music, with a couple of Bob Marley's tunes sprinkled in for effect ("No Woman No Cry" and "I Shot The Sheriff"). Thank you. Now get off the stage.

After the roadies did their magic, and suitable time had passed, the lights went down, the crowd went nuts, and the massive guitar chords of VH's version of "You Really Got Me" blasted out of the speakers. From that point on, it was nonstop party rock and roll for 2 hours.

The Van Halen brothers looked to be in fine physical and sober form, and David Lee Roth, the grinning banshee, was similarly happy to be on stage again. Those three guys, music veterans all, showed us what a professional rock and roll show is all about. The guitar player did his pyrotechnic technique thing, showing off the full kit bag of two-handed tapping, blindingly fast runs, and chest-thumping power chords. Obviously, the years of hard living haven't robbed Eddie of his prodigious musical gifts. His trademark solo portion of the show, very late in the evening, was stunning as usual. About 8 minutes of all the cool things you can do with an electric guitar, 16 amps turned to "11," an arsenal of effects pedals, and two magic hands...it was amazing. The funniest thing was how all the guitar players in the audience were staring at the closeups on the big video screens of Eddie's hands as he played all that cool stuff...it was no different than the look that guys have at strip clubs! Sort of a slack-jawed half grin, half grimace, as we watched something we'd never be able to do. :-)

David Lee Roth? He sort of screamed a lot of the lyrics, but who's worried about lyrics in this setting, anyway? He never was much of an actual singer, but he's lost none of his raw showmanship. He strutted the stage the whole night through, like some sort of Atomic Rooster, with that crazed ear-to-ear grin plastered on his face. He was clearly the happiest person on stage, and who can blame him?

Alex played the drums with all the thunder that was required, locked in tight with his brother as they supplied the stuff that makes arena rock so intoxicating. I'm not sure that he needed all four (4!!) bass drums in his kit, but it sure looked cool. His drum solo was actually pretty cool, and I'm not really a drum solo guy.

Now, I must discuss little Wolfgang Van Halen, the Child Of Eddie, 16 years old, in his first band, Daddy's band, playing every night in front of 15,000 people. Sigh... I must admit that any anger stems from a heavy sense of envy, but the kid looked like, well, a 16-year old kid. He played the bass very well, bringing the bottom end, and obviously he has a genetic gift for the guitar and bass. No problems there. The singing was adequate, but no 16-year old can match pipes with Roth. I just thought he looked a little scared, a little hesitant to do anything outside of a tightly scripted list of Acceptable Moves. He may turn out to be a fine adult someday, but one wonders what this trial by fire might do to any 16-year old boy. It would nearly be impossible to maintain any clear sense of one's self under those circumstances, no matter how much fun all the glitz and glamour might be.

The encore was the expected "Jump," and after the last chords echoed through the arena, the night was over. What's the final verdict? For musical quality, I give the instrumental portion a "10," and the vocals just a "6." I missed the portions of the songs where Roth either used to scream or wail those high notes, and the sound system swallowed up the vocals a lot. For entertainment value, I give it a "9.5." Geez, it was Van Halen, the original Van Halen, rocking loud and proud. While it wasn't 1984 again, it sure was a lot of fun. Well worth the price of admission, and even worth the long rambling journey out of the jumbled parking lot and back home to Austin that night.

Dancing In The Dark

2008-01-09T09:53:00.000-06:00

The weather returned to good old chilly and clear this morning, so we got to enjoy that while taking laps around the Zilker soccer field complex. The mood was good as we all cruised over to Zilker and got drilled up. Gilbert gave us a few words about the workout, and then it was time to group up. At that point, things got a little jumbled, since a lot of us don't really know who's who yet in the new groups. The first group went out, though, and then when no one stepped forward for the second group, a bunch of us took off as a mob for our workout.

We started out sort of slow, but by about halfway through the repeat, I had worked my way up to the front, and we were moving a little more smartly by the end of that loop. The gates were locked across the road at two points on the Zilker loop, which made the start/finish a little compacted, and it made for a brief cross-country detour at about the 3/4 mile mark. For the last three repeats, I was in a smaller pack, and ran with two guys who are new to me. I've talked with one of them, but not the other. Note to self: Ask people their name! Anyway, we were very consistent on the last three repeats, and I was done. I had to get back to make sure Jake got on the school bus. Teenagers. The sun was just coming up over the horizon when we knocked out that fourth repeat, and was the only time I could really see the road all morning. It was a nice sunrise, though.

I ran back with Amy, and we had a fun talk. So, for the day, 4 x 2000m repeats (actually 1.18 miles). 8:57, 8:40, 8:42, 8:42. Average pace was 7:21/mile, which is about right for the slightly longer repeats compared to the mile repeats last week. I felt good all morning long, and if time had permitted, a fifth repeat wouldn't have been a terrible ordeal. That's all good.

Total mileage for the day was a shade over 8 miles. I'm looking forward already to the tour on Saturday of the 3M half marathon course. That course is fun even in training, with a gentle downhill trend the whole way.

Chillin' In The 'Hood

2008-01-08T12:22:00.000-06:00

Ah, yes...if it's Tuesday, we've got a brand new weather situation here in Austin. Just last week, it was lovely, crisp and cool. Yesterday, not so good, but okay, and today we're well into the 70s again. I suppose it could be worse, though. :-)

So, today I managed to visit the gym for the first time in eons. Okay, maybe not eons in the dictionary sense of the word, but it's been quite a while. I sidled into Gold's this morning, and found that yesterday's circuit training had left some sore spots in my weak core. I'll take that as a sign that work needs to be done. Anyway, I won't relate each and every exercise, but I did an introductory round of stuff, single sets, on core (planks, crunches, etc.) and legs. I felt better having completed any sort of gym workout, and now that the ice is broken, future visits won't be such a mental chore. And, yes, the Resolution members were out in good numbers, but at this point, I'm essentially a Resolution member, so I will leave those folks alone.

Once I got home, I changed and went out in the 'Hood for an easy hour's run. 6.4 miles, exactly one hour, 9:19/mile. It was warmer and bright sun, but still a nice day for a run. Everything checked out okay, and by mile two, I was working through any residual soreness from yesterday's lunges and today's leg weights.

So, for compliance with the Program, I'll give myself a solid grade. I'm not quite back to full sets of gym work yet, but that will come as long as I continue to go there.

Tomorrow, 4-5 x 2000m repeats. Yowzah! I could probably slink through the workout and just do 3 x 2000m, but I'm going to approach it as a 4 x 2000m day, and if I manage things properly, then I'll go ahead and do all 5 repeats. Should be interesting.

Circuitry

2008-01-07T20:31:00.000-06:00

This morning was sort of springlike, weatherwise, but tolerable. It was a good day to head to Austin High and join a bunch of Gazelles for circuit training. We had a bunch of new folks there today, I think, so I believe Gilbert took it slightly easy on us. Plus, the 30K racers were there to gently work out the junk left over from that hilly tour, and circuit is a good way of doing that.

Those who ran the 30K seemed awfully relaxed and strong today, which was very impressive. Equally impressive was Larry, who ran a 100K race all day on Saturday, and then showed up this morning to ease back into running. All of those folks were pretty awesome, as far as I'm concerned.

The circuit stuff was the usual, with the addition of pullups and medicine ball magic to the regular exercises. I hung out around Rachel, Brian and Amy, and we were diligent about the exercises, but pretty casual about the 400m runs between each circuit. We got the full benefit of the workout, since we were directly into and out of the exercises, but we certainly didn't bust a move doing those 400s. :-)

After 3 circuits, Gilbert had us do another round of 4 different medicine ball exercises, and I paired up with Amy for that. She chose the 8 pound medicine ball, but except for dealing with a heavier toss, it wasn't too bad. After the medicine ball, we were secretly hoping that a certain exercise that Shall Not Be Named would not appear, and we were rewarded when we went directly to a couple of rounds of fast feet. The first round was either 1 or 2 minutes, I don't know which, and the second round was either 2 or 3 minutes. All I know is that I was about 3 seconds away from having to stop on that last round of FF. The whistle blew just in time. Bernard accompanied our FF song on a drum, which lent a new vibe to the whole experience.

Fun recovery run back to RunTex with Michael, Wes, Brian, Amy and Rachel, and our day was done. It was a wimpy mileage day, around 4.5 miles, but I'm glad to get in some exercises to boost my reentry into gym work. Tuesday should be that day, if I get myself moving in the direction of the gym.

I got my assignment for the AT&T marathon entertainment volunteerism, and I got a good spot, I think. I'll be at the baseball fields on Great Northern at about mile 15.5. Not too deep in the race that people will be in distress, but not so early that the runners will be jammed up together. Hopefully, I'll be able to keep an eye on the runners and give shout outs to my peeps!

ARA 30K - A Spectator's View

2008-01-06T19:00:00.001-06:00

This morning, I joined a bunch of Gazelles to volunteer at one of the water stops for the ARA 30K in hilly SW Austin. We were at about mile 7, and we had a full-service stop (GU, Gu2O, and water). The day started early in the dark, of course, and finished some 3 hours later when the last runner passed our position.

In between, the great crew efficiently managed to hand out all of our Gu2O, a bunch of water, and a gaggle of GU (I think Tri-Berry was the preferred choice among today's runners, narrowly beating out Vanilla Bean. Chocolate finished third out of three, but the GU staff reports that the super fast folks at the front of the race predominately asked for choco-GU.). We also did some serious cheering, especially for anyone sporting their Gazelles colors. By the time the runners arrived at our place, they were still looking pretty relaxed, and it was fun to yell at our friends.

We had the stop all buttoned up by the time the cleanup truck arrived, and I was done in time to scurry back to the finishing line to try and see everyone at the end. There was no available parking near the finish, so I took up residence on the last giant hill, right at the 18 mile marker, and cheered my friends up that last tough climb. All things considered, the Gazelles looked pretty darned good. I offered up my Dr. Pepper to Amy, but I think she was afraid of losing her balance and rolling back down the hill that she had worked so hard to climb. :-)

It was big fun, and I'm very impressed with the runners today. That course was just epic, and I'm sure it will achieve some sort of legendary status among Austin runners. It'll go in there with that double loop 20 miler up in Round Rock where the wind threatened to blow us backwards, the ice storm Freescale Marathon, and other races of that ilk.

Today we put away the Christmas decorations, which is always just the bestest time, and everyone then chose their own 30 minute anti-clutter project to complete. We might set a new record for amount of recycle materials on trash day this week. :-)

Long Running [entered 1/6/08]

2008-01-05T11:20:00.000-06:00

Saturday, it was long run time again. On an average weather day (humid and in the high 50s to low 60s), I met up with the gang at 5:30am for a tour d'Austin. The AT&T folks were due for 20, but my peeps were "only" going to go for 16.5 or so. After the initial shuffling around, I ended up running with Leslie and Frank. They must have been taking it easy due to injury discomfort, but I still appreciate the fact that I had folks that wanted to run my pace. :-)

We started out by heading south on the initial 5 miles or so of the AT&T course. That first hill is still a tester, especially since it appears right away, before we got a chance to warm up much at all. I was worried a bit as we worked our way up the steady incline, all the way to the end of Lightsey, since I was huffing and puffing more than I'd prefer that early in a long run. However, once we turned back north on S. First, I settled down, and from that point on, I was running fairly comfortably.

I had thought we'd find lots of AT&T folks running around our pace, but I suppose most of our pace pals were running the 30K on Sunday, and thus weren't there for this long run. Oh, well. We found plenty to discuss as we cruised around town. Gilbert had the rolling water stop set up around Oltorf, and he was already in an expansive mood. Again, it's funny how we are all so wide-awake so early in the morning, even if we're not necessarily "morning people."

We didn't encounter too many runners this morning, presumably due to tomorrow's race. Still, it was a little weird to have the streets and sidewalks basically to ourselves.

We took a second quick water stop at Auditorium Shores, where I took a GU as well. Nice trip on the trail to Mopac, then Lake Austin Blvd. to the next water/Accelerade stop at Enfield. We were already 9 miles into our morning, and it seemed like most of the hard terrain was still yet to come. Man, I'm glad I'm not doing AT&T this year!!

The hills of Enfield and Exposition came next, and we got through those in pretty fine shape. It was sure great to get over the bridge at Mopac, because that was the last bad hill of the day, really. We met up with Lisa and Laura at the water/Accelerade stop on Shoal Creek, and had a brief chat as we took our second GU and tanked up on fluids. From there, we only had maybe 5 miles to go, so weirdly, we were almost done.

Picking our way across 38th Street was different, since we don't usually use 38th to get across town, but it worked out okay. Kenny was there on Duval with the next water/Accelerade stop, and after topping off, it was time to finish this thing.

I started running up front after that, through the massive construction project at the UT football stadium, through the nearly empty UT campus, up those nasty little hills on San Jacinto going past the Capitol, and then finally, we were on the downhill tip on 11th and then Congress. I tried to get us run over at several of the stoplights and crosswalks on Congress, but we managed to escape without serious damage. I just wanted to get done, I guess. :-)

Leslie were running along at the end, and she kept asking what the GPS said the mileage was. When we realized that we were going to be really close to an even 17 miles, we decided to continue on the trail for just a little bit after the usual stopping place, just to let the watch roll over to an even 17. Silly? Yes. But, by the time we ran past SRVaughan's statue, we had achieved our minor goal. 6 striders later, I was ready for the full stretching routine.

We did most of the optional "bonus" stretches on Saturday, and we had an overflow crowd at the Annex that spilled out onto the loading ramp and parking lot outside. It was a nice day for stretching, even if it was a little warm to be considered ideal for running.

For the day, 16.94 miles (after accounting for the minor distances that accumulate at water stops, you lose some absolute mileage). 2:42:03 with all water stop time included, 9:34/mile total pace. Actual running pace after subtracting 10:31 in water stop time was a nifty 8:57/mile, plenty good for me.

I scored a surprising 43.5 miles this week, the most in quite a while. Got in 5 days of running. Failed to return to the gym, but I should get that kick started next week after circuit training on Monday reveals the state of my weak core. All in all, things are going great. I might back off a tiny bit on mileage this week to allow some recovery and rebuilding...we'll see how that goes.

The Quintet Rolls LBLake

2008-01-03T09:46:00.000-06:00

This morning was another perfectly crisp and clear day, just right for a relaxed run around Lady Bird Lake with the peeps. It was hovering around 30 degrees all morning, and it was fabulous! Marcy, Rachel, Brian and Michael made up our running posse along with little old me, and we had a grand time putting in our 7 miles. Lots of conversation, lots of laughs, and almost as a side effect, we got in a nice run while doing it.

Just as we got started, the fast folks from the Tuesday/Thursday crew blasted by us in the opposite direction, as they finished up their fartlek workout. Alex looked like it was effortless running for him as he went by. We enjoyed a really beautiful sunrise that peeked over the horizon and through the buildings of downtown Austin just as we made our water stop at Auditorium Shores. It was just a delightful day, and I was very happy to be a part of this run. Like I said, the actual running was nearly secondary to the good company and conversation, but we took care of business there, too.

For the day, 6.95 miles, 9:09/mile pace, even with the water stop. We were clicking away at an 8:35/mile clip for those last 4 miles, but it felt good to me. I'm probably the poky little puppy in that group, but it worked out for me today, at least.

After bundling up in dry clothes, I stretched just a bit before driving back to the hacienda. I'm feeling really good lately about my running, and I've enjoyed these last couple of weeks. So far, so good. Now, I just need to get my gym visits kick-started again, and I'll be all set!

Dark Fartleks

2008-01-02T08:37:00.000-06:00

It just stayed dark this morning all the way around the lake loop as we did our fartleks. It was nice and chilly, around 27 degrees, which is totally okay with me! I felt great all the way around.

I ran with a new group (to me, at least), since most of my normal pace peeps weren't there today. Brian, Rachel, Michael and a couple of others were up ahead, but I missed out on them early. So, I hooked up with Monique's crew, and I was a happy camper. Still feeling my way back into speedy stuff since the long marathon recovery period, I was content to hang out with this new gang. It wasn't a stroll around the lake, either. We took turns leading, and everyone did a good job pulling the bunch along when they took their time at the front. I had watch issues, so I don't have the usual super detailed data from the fartleks, but suffice it to say that we were moving right along on the faster bits. We stood around for most of a minute at Mopac while a couple of folks grabbed water, so that mile was artificially slower.

Gilbert sneaked up on us during our cooldown run at the end of the workout, so everyone picked it up a bit once we realized that that's who was joining us. :-)

Stats: 9:20, 9:14 (warmup), then first fartlek burst at 7:13/mile pace, then miles at 8:57 (extra recovery minute in that one), 8:19, 8:33 (the one with the Mopac stop in it), and 0.33 miles at 7:59/mile. Warmdown miles at 9:09 and 0.51 miles at 8:53/mile. 6.92 miles for the day, overall pace 8:51/mile. We were doing 1:00 on and 1:00 off fartleks, so we did a good job with pacing, I think. It was tough at the detour on the north side of the trail to maintain a good steady pace for just a bit, but we got past that soon enough.

I had fun out there today, and it was interesting to run with entirely new people for a change. I've got to learn some names!!!

After we got done, Gilbert opened up the Annex, so I did the full stretching routine, more or less, since we were inside in the warmth of a closed building. My legs will appreciate that tomorrow, I'm sure.

Froeliche Neue Jahr!

2008-01-01T17:37:00.001-06:00

Or something like that. My Deutsch isn't what it once was... :-)

I hope the fledgling New Year finds all of you hale and hearty (and not too hungover, if you partied hard last night). This morning, I got caught up in the Twilight Zone Marathon on the Sci-Fi Channel, digging on those tasty nuggets of TV written and hosted by the incomparable Rod Serling. When I was finally able to avert my eyes, I was then distracted by the bowl games. Finally, about 3:00, I dragged my carcass off the couch, put on running togs, and headed out into a beautiful 50 degree, sunny day. What a glorious way to start the new year!

I had a nice little cruise around the 'Hood and back on the trails behind the 'Hood, enjoying the weather, running nice and easy. These recovery runs are so good for me, but I've neglected them in 2007. I hope to rectify that issue this year. I had fun on the occasionally rocky trails, and I only fell once, late in the run, when my attention wandered just enough...boom! No harm done, though, just a scrape on one of my hands.

For the day, a very easy 4.7 miles in about 46 minutes. I told you it was easy running! Legs feel great, and I know that the magic of the recovery run will help purge any remaining junk from my legs that remains from the mile repeats. Tomorrow will be a fun fartlek workout with the herd.

Return to Speedwork

2007-12-31T10:25:00.001-06:00

Another crisp and clear morning greeted us today as a fairly numerous group gathered for mile repeats. With Tuesday classes being cancelled for the holiday tomorrow, we got some of the Tuesday/Thursday crowd to join us for the festivities. On the menu today was mile repeats. For the AT&T peeps, somewhere in the 5-6 range for repeats, but for recovering marathoners like me, maybe 3 or 4.

Nice conversation as we rolled over to Zilker with Amy, Marcy and Brian, then drills. The call to the post happened next, as Gilbert got the groups together, with their target times. I was in a big pack of maybe 12 runners, many of whom I knew were about my speed for usual workouts, so I figured I was in the right place. At our imaginary beep, we were off. Almost immediately, I realized that we were moving a lot quicker than the normal reconnaissance pace for the first repeat. It felt okay, just a little quick. I soon found myself hanging out at the back of the pack. I managed to close up on the group a bit towards the end of the repeat, but even so, I was surprised to see that my caboose finishing position scored me a 7:08 repeat. Go figure!

2 minutes rest seemed luxurious, and we were off again. This time, I finished maybe 2 people from the back of the group, and still scored a 7:03 repeat. Those folks at the front of the pack were doing some serious repeating! My third repeat was 7:02, and given that I was just coming back to speedwork, I called it a day. I felt fine, and four repeats wouldn't have been terrible, but for a first workout, this was enough. Anne and I ran a slower (8:25) mile repeat for a warmdown lap while our peeps were doing their fourth and fifth repeats, and then I ran back with the gang once they were done.

It was good to meet Martha, at least to put a name to a face, and as always it was fun to hang out with my friends. I stuck around for a while afterwards, once I bundled up with warm and dry clothes, and talked at length with Alex, John, James, Gilbert, and Margaret. Good times...

For the day, about 7.75 total miles, and I'm happy to be back with the speedwork portion of the program. I think we're doing fartleks on Wednesday, which I usually enjoy, so that will make for a good week. A good day at the running office!

New Year's Eve plans? Nope. Don't usually do that, and this year is no exception. I'll cook up a nice dinner here at the hacienda, and we'll try to stay up to watch the ball drop at Times Square. Scintillating, eh? :-) Be safe out there, and let's start 2008 on a good note.

Climb Mt. Niitaka!

2007-12-29T16:51:00.000-06:00

Okay, so I stole the title from WWII history class. Sue me. "Climb Mt. Bonnell" would of course be much more accurate, if I were writing about today's run. So, about that run...

6:00am was the start time for today's little jaunt up Mt. Bonnell, via the slightly extended approach Lake Austin Blvd. to Enfield to Exposition to 35th. Once again, running Enfield to Exposition up to 35th, I was happy with my decision to skip the AT&T marathon this year. That's a tough little stretch from about mile 8 to mile 11 or so. But, I digress, as usual. :-)

It was really nice out there this morning, crisp and clear with starting temps around 33 degrees. For me, that's great running weather. Warm hat and gloves at the ready, I hung out in the Annex while we gathered ourselves up for the day's journey. I took the time to chat with Amy as Gilbert talked with us for a bit about things hither and yon, and we finally got going maybe 10 minutes past the scheduled start time.

Amy and I grouped up with Brian and Frank, and our pace pod settled into the day's groove. We had a grand time rolling along up to the first water stop, chatting away about the usual topics. A fairly snappy water stop later, it was time to deal with the hilly stuff. Enfield to Exposition to 35th was rolling, but Amy and I got through that in good shape. Frank and Brian had dropped back to investigate a construction site on Enfield. Amy and I made the turn on Mt. Bonnell Road, and for the first time in quite a while, it was time for a Bonnell Climb. I caught up with a few folks on the climb, which made me feel pretty darned good, and I hung out for a while at the Bonnell water stop talking with Colleen and Eric and a bunch of other folks while my group formed back up. Alex came back by, smiling away, as his group of Bonnelliacs returned from their trip down the backside of Bonnell to the Dry Creek Saloon and back. Fun times.

I was grinning, myself, once again being reminded about how much I enjoy the Bonnell runs, for whatever reason. I guess it's just cool to tell people that you ran up Mt. Bonnell that day. :-) So, a GU, 6 minutes, and some Powerade later, we took off to return to RunTex. Pretty soon, Brian picked up the pace and left us in the dust on Pecos, but Frank, Amy and I maintained our group through "Backwards Scenic" as we picked our way back to the last water stop at Enfield and Lake Austin. The Rogues were coming down Scenic as we were going the other way, and maybe Austin Fit had some groups in there, too. Hard to tell. Certainly it felt like we were running against the human tide!

Gilbert and Kenny were there at the water stop when we arrived, and we exchanged some light-hearted bantering as we took our last GU and had some Accelerade. Oh, Amy was sporting a special holiday flavour of GU, something like Chocolate Mint? She assured me it was pretty yummy, but that's too much for me. Santa put a 6 pack of the special stuff in her stocking. That Santa's quite a guy!

As we rolled down Lake Austin Blvd., I decided that I was officially happy that I'd joined everyone for the full Bonnell Experience today. I was feeling great, and with the snappy weather and all, it was just a great day. Not to mention that my pace pals for the day were such great running friends! Another day to revel in all that my running hobby/avocation has brought my way...

After announcing that we weren't going to do the "fast finish" that Gilbert had suggested, I think we did actually pick it up a bit down the homestretch. Not terribly so, but a little. Frank took a side trail on the way home, and then I pulled away a bit from Amy in the last mile. I guess I was just feeling good, and my legs decided on their own to pull me to the finish at their pace.

I finished nicely, and enjoyed a cup or two of water. There were more Gazelles there, and more opportunities to talk with folks. I feel like I'm back with the gang now that my White Rock recovery time is over, and I'm looking forward to the weeks ahead.

The scoring, for those at home: 10:00, 9:29, 9:26, 9:05 (2:19 GU/Accelerade stop), 9:01, 8:55, 8:50, and 0.68 miles up Bonnell at 9:43/mile pace (6:00 water/Powerade stop), 9:20, 9:05, 9:20 (2:05 GU/Accelerade stop), 9:04, 8:35, 8:47, and 0.86 miles at 8:00/mile pace. Final score was 14.55 miles at 9:06 actual running pace, 9:49/mile counting all the stop time. HR numbers were pretty good, legs feel good, great day at the running office.

It was fun to lead the stretching for the gang afterwards, even though I had to think pretty hard about the correct order of things from time to time. Much conversation followed, as we all enjoyed the bright sunshine and cool temperatures.

For the week, I ended up with a pretty robust 35 miles, although most of it was easy running. I can no longer hide from speedwork, though, so Monday will be mile repeats with the gang at Zilker. It's good to be able to run like this, and I hope to never take it for granted!

More EZ Runnin' With Friends

2007-12-27T12:04:00.000-06:00

Today, I met up with Frank and Rachel at the Rock at the leisurely time of 9:15am for a 7 mile spin around LBLake. The weather? It was spectacular! About 38 degrees, bright sun, crisp and clear. Ahhhhhhh.....

It was a rare treat to run with both Frank and Rachel, as they've graduated from my usual pace pod, but I was able to run a semi-MGP pace run today while they slummed along. :-) I had fun chatting away with them as we cruised around the pond, and we covered the usual topics. And, no, I cannot share any of that conversation with you. What is said on the trail stays on the trail, after all.

So, for the day, 6.82 miles, 1:02:29, 9:10 pace or thereabouts. That time includes our quick water stop at Auditorium Shores. We dialed in the pace over the first 3 miles, and then dipped to the 8:40 range for the last 4 miles. I enjoyed myself out there. These runs since White Rock have served to rekindle the running fire that I had let die out a bit, and I'm grateful to Frank, Rachel and other folks who've asked me along. Sometimes you just need a reminder of why we do this in the first place, and if you pay attention, those reminders can come when least expected.

Side note: I was listening to Tom Petty's "Buried Treasure" show on XM radio this morning, and Little Richard's "Lucille" was played. Has there ever been a more perfect rock 'n roll record made? I had the radio cranked, and it made me feel all happy inside. If you don't have a copy, shame on you. If you do, go get it out or kick it up on the iPod and get reacquainted with Mr. Perryman and his rollicking piano riff and those amazing vocals. A slice of recorded musical perfection.

Christmas jogging

2007-12-25T16:06:00.000-06:00

After sitting around for a while this afternoon, I couldn't ignore the beautiful weather outside. So, I got geared up and went for a little recovery run. It was bright and sunny, with temps in the mid- to high-50's. Very nice. At any rate, the run was a HR effort, staying well within recovery range. I stayed as much as I could on the water tower trail behind the 'Hood, and ended up with a relaxed 3.5 miles in about 33 minutes. Everything checked out well, so mission accomplished. I've been neglecting these recovery Tuesday/Thursday runs, so for a while, I'm just trying to get back in the habit of doing them, and will slowly build them back up to the regulation 7 miles. There is something to the raw total mileage in a week, and I'll be paying better attention to that in the coming months.

Oscar Peterson and Dan Fogelberg

2007-12-25T11:27:00.000-06:00

Now those are two names not usually found in the same place! As is apparent, I'm a music junkie, and my interests are pretty wide-ranging. I've been a fan of both Mr. Peterson and Mr. Fogelberg for decades, and both of them have passed away within the last week. Last year, of course, the great James Brown died on Christmas Day, and this holiday season brought the news of Peterson and Fogelberg's demise. I choose to look at this as an opportunity to think back on their music and what it has meant to me over all these years.

I was introduced to Fogelberg first, back in 10th grade, I think, when I was at a church music camp. A guy there from Houston was playing "Wysteria," from Fogelberg's first album, "Home Free." I thought that was magic, as it was long before I learned how to make my right hand fingers dance around and play that syncopated and flowing picking style. When I got home, I went to the record store and bought that album, and I must have listened to it 10 times through in that first week. Sure, it was a little overtly sentimental, maybe a bit too soft to be called any kind of "rock" music, but the guitar work and his lyrics made sense to me, at least. I went on to have most of his records through the mid-80's, and finally I was able to play my own versions of those tunes when I got more serious about fingerstyle guitar about a decade ago. So, despite the critical scorn that was heaped upon his music, I will always hold a fond spot in my musical memory for Dan Fogelberg. And "Wysteria" is still cool to play on guitar...Fogelberg is gone too soon, felled by prostate cancer, but his music will be a lasting tribute.

Oscar Peterson was a discovery I made in college at Emory. The RA on the dorm floor with us was a jazz fan, and I heard some amazing music coming from his room one day as I walked by. It was some complicated interplay of guitar, bass and piano, and it sounded like everyone was playing solos all at once. Crazy, man, crazy! Upon inquiry, I found that the album was the great "Trio" album featuring Joe Pass, Oscar Peterson, and Neils Pedersen. That weekend, I made my weekly pilgrimage to the record store (Wax 'n Facts), and picked up my own copy. From that chance discovery, I got into Joe Pass and his fabulous guitar work, and I've purchased a bunch of other Oscar Peterson records as well, including a fabulous Christmas CD. Peterson was amazingly fast and fluid, and to this day I can't comprehend how he could play such massive and rolling figures in his left hand while still playing cool melodies and solo flights with his right. Listening on headphones, you can hear him groan along while he plays, sort of singing with himself. Peterson lived to be 82 years old, and he was able to perform until very late in life, so as a musician, that's all one can ask, I think. He's received most every honor a musician can receive, especially in his native Canada, so that's a life well led, I'd say.

So, now I'm going back to settle in with the family as we all go to our separate corners and dig into our gifts. The kids are upstairs on the Wii playing Guitar Hero, I'll be messing around with my books and CD's, and Mary Anne will relax while enjoying her soft and warm clothing. Yeah, I'll get up there to play Guitar Hero, too, but I'll wait for a while. :-)

Merry Christmas!

Catching Up

2007-12-24T16:19:00.000-06:00

On Christmas Eve, I am taking the opportunity to catch up a bit with how things have been going since the marathon. Last week, I got out on Tuesday and Thursday for nice little 40-45 minute runs, without real regard for distance. On Saturday, we were in Lufkin visiting family, and I managed to get out on Saturday morning in the drizzle and rain for a little over 8 miles. That was yet another Tour d'Lufkin, visiting several sites from my youth. I went through downtown, past the old Junior High and High School complexes, by the great donut shop and the barbecue places, the churches where I performed in various groups, and of course by many friends' houses. It was a nice tour, even when the rain came down hard at the end of the run. My legs felt great all week, and I feel like I can pick up my running a bit more this week.

This morning, I met up with a few folks (Alicia, Larry, Marcy, Frank, and one other guy who I haven't yet met) for the scheduled "pace run." The AT&T people were supposed to do an easy 2 miles and then 8 miles at MGP. Frank and I ended up trailing those other people, as we enjoyed our 10 mile loop, chatting away on topics here and there. The running was pretty snappy, for me. For Frank, it was loafing, but we ended up with 10.2 miles at 9:12/mile overall pace. That includes two stops for water. Our actual running pace was under 9:00/mile. My HR was in a good range, so it turned out to be just what I needed at this point. I still feel great, and I guess I'll visit the Gazelles on Wednesday to return to light speedwork. The AT&T peeps are doing a stepdown ladder workout, so I'll do maybe fewer repeats or a slightly slower pace or both in order to keep up my "recovery" status.

After the 10 miler, Ava, Carmen, Larry, Frank and I met up at Maudie's for a big breakfast. We sat around, eating and talking, for quite a while. It was a great time, and once again I was reminded just how fine the people are that stay with Gazelles. Sure, we have members from time to time that aren't the most sociable, but by and large, they don't stick around long. We all work very hard at all the workouts, but once the work is over, we really enjoy each other's company. It's just the finest experience I've had as a runner, even 3 years (or is it 4 now?) into my Gazelles membership. Lucky, lucky, lucky...

Now, my Christmas preparations are done, the presents are wrapped, and I'm down to item 14 on my List, which is "Change strings on classical guitar."

Merry Christmas to all out there!

EZ Runnin'

2007-12-15T10:19:00.000-06:00

Today, I took my first running steps since the marathon. I met up with Dorothy nice and late (7:30am), and we took a little journey around LBLake. For the first time in a while, the sun was out, and it was crisp and clear. We chatted all the way around, and generally had a fun time. My legs felt really great, with no pains or soreness to speak of. All things considered, it was a great little run. I did 4 striders afterwards, and those went well, too. Happy happy joy joy, blah blah blah. :-)

I scored 4.75 miles, 9:18/mile pace, good things all around. It was great to see everyone again, after being sort of out of the loop for a couple of weeks. We got to move indoors into the Annex for stretching, which was a treat in the breezy conditions outdoors. Stretching was fun as usual.

So, a good start to the post-marathon weeks was had. I'll visit the gym next week and run every other day, more or less, as I do the old reverse taper to get back up to full training volume.

White Rock Marathon 2007 [Entered 12/13]

2007-12-09T16:35:00.000-06:00

This year’s White Rock Marathon would be a return visit for me. It was the site of my first marathon way back in December 1992, which is ages ago. Mostly, I remember walking a lot in that race and being really cold. My time was 4:24 and change back in 1992. I hoped for better results this time.

I drove up on Friday, carrying pretty much every combination of running gear for the marathon. Being Texas, we might get almost anything, so I was ready for all those possibilities. The forecast on Friday said that we would get rain, starting temps in the low 60’s, and dropping temperatures during the race. I could be okay with that, but I was hoping for a little better. Oh, well. Nothing I can do about that. I inhaled an entire pizza for dinner on Friday, and slept the sleep of the overserved runner Friday night. Bliss.

After a great night’s sleep on Friday, I was awakened by Randy and Frank, who in separate phone calls maybe 5 minutes apart, both called to inform me of the wonderful race day forecasts that were coming up on TV. Okay. And after I hung up with Frank, my alarm went off to wake me up. Funny, that. They were right, though. Now, the weather dudes were saying rainy conditions and temps in the 40’s to 50’s, coming as early as noon on Saturday. With that in mind, I put on shorts and a singlet, and met Randy and Frank for the ritualistic EZ 3 miler on the race course.

We walked over towards the nearest race course intersection (Ross and Houston), and on the way, we checked out the Dailey Plaza area and the Texas School Book Depository building. I’ve never seen that, despite living in Dallas for a couple of years long ago. It all looks much more compact than it does on the TV reenactments and shows, but it’s still a sad memory. Anyway, we had a nice jog going backwards along the course, and turned around at about the 2 miles to go mark to head back. We finished at the finish line area, so except for the fact that it was still so warm, we felt good about our reconnaissance run. The finishing stretch for those 2 miles is 3M type downhill terrain. Except for some occasionally uncertain footing, it would be a great finish. On the way back to the hotel, we received a very quick and informative presentation from a guy who just hangs out at the JFK site. He was really good, and we all felt bad that we didn’t have any money with us for his gratuity. We tried coming back later to actually pay him a little something, but he wasn’t visible to us at that time.

A shower and a quick trip to get some bagels, and then Frank and I headed to the Expo. Randy had taken care of that on Friday. We did a little light shopping at the Expo, sailed through the packet pickup, sampled some food and drink goodies, and then got out of there. Chores done, we went to our respective corners and chilled out for a while, awaiting the arrival of the other Gazelles.

The three of us drove the race course later in the afternoon, and except for some confusion during the area after the hills coming off the lake, we pretty much knew what was coming on Sunday. I had forgotten just how big White Rock Lake is, but I had correctly remembered that the hills coming off of WR Lake weren’t all that steep, but they would be a test coming that late in the race.

We met up with Larry and Ava and their friends Tim and Rita, and had a nice dinner at Macaroni Grill (I know, why didn’t we go local? Hey, I was quite content with my dinner. Food exploration could wait for a non-marathon trip to Big D.). By the time we left the Mac at 6:30 or so, we could tell that the long-promised cool front was arriving, which was a relief.

Everyone went to their rooms after that, and I puttered around, pinning my bib on my long-sleeved Gazelles shirt, getting all my stuff laid out, my chip in my shoelaces, my gear bag loaded with post-race stuff, and generally staying off my feet. I played some guitar, working on AT&T songs, kept drinking and snacking, and finally turned out the lights at 11:00. All I had to do now was run the race.

I’m not sure how well I really slept, but it didn’t feel like I got as deep into slumberland as I did the night before. I even woke up at 5:00am, way before my alarm was going off, but I just stayed in bed until the beep, gently stretching my legs. Once the alarm went off, it was time for Accelerade and a banana. I put on warm clothes over my race gear for the walk to the start, and met up with Larry and Frank in the lobby. Now I was finally getting a little nervous. We were a bundle of conversational chatter as we strolled over to the start/finish area, sipping our Gatorade and babbling about the race to come. The weather? For me, it was perfect. It was maybe 50 degrees, heavily overcast, even weirdly misty, and the temps were predicted to drop during the day, so this was as warm as it was going to get.

It was pretty exciting at the start/finish area, as the buzz of the runners filled the air. We found the Gazelles/TriZones tent (thanks, Tracy!!) and hung out there for a while. The rain came down a bit, starting maybe 40 minutes before the start, but again, that didn’t bug me too much. Finally, about 25 minutes to the start, I got out of my warm pre-race clothes, put on my custom-made black plastic trash bag and throwaway t-shirt, and packed up my stuff to be dropped off at gear check. Having wished everyone a good race, I sidled into the crowds and waited to run. The rain fell up until maybe 10 minutes to go, and then it stopped. Nice. Wheelchair start, then elite women started, and then finally, we were off!

Oh, yeah, goals? I mainly wanted to finish with dignity to erase the nasty memory of AT&T 2007, where I walked most of the 6 miles between 19 and 25. Time? Maybe 3:50 if things broke just right, but I planned to go out comfortably, stay away from stupid pacing early, enjoy the trip around the lake, get up the hills, and then see what I had left for the 5 mile downhill finish. Time wasn’t a big deal to me. This was more about style points for me, I think. I wanted to enjoy a marathon for a change.

And they were off. I was lined up near the 4:00 pace group, and I kept their pace balloons in sight for quite a while…sometimes I was ahead, sometimes I was behind. The first couple of miles were spent watching my footing on the sometimes uneven pavement, but the crowds were not an impediment. I was able to run like I wanted all day. The race organizers had permitted exactly the number of runners that the course could handle. The half marathon started an hour later, so we didn’t have the issue of massive crowds to the half marathon cutoff point like many races do. I enjoyed the handbell choir at about mile 1.5, playing “Deck the Halls.” From there to about mile 4, where we were on Turtle Creek Blvd., the streets had a curious combination of bricks, streetcar tracks, and asphalt, sometimes all at once. I kept to the asphalt as much as possible, given that the other options would be slick with the morning mist and rain.

I ran with an ultramarathon guy from about mile 2 to mile 10 or so, although we wobbled apart a few times at water stops. It was amusing to have someone to chat with a bit. We deciphered the bib colors, which were thoughtfully done. White bibs were pre-registered marathoners. Blue bibs were pre-registered first time marathoners, which I thought was a nice touch. Gold were the late registrants. The bibs had our first names on them, which is great, but it does freak you out a bit when you’re in a strange city and folks are yelling at you late in the race (“Go, Jay, Go!!”).

The course was pretty once we got to Turtle Creek, and for many miles, we cruised through neighborhoods that were almost shockingly loaded with money. Many of the houses were obviously rebuilds on lots that formerly held normally scaled homes. The newer ones were easy to spot, because they were built absolutely to the setback limits of the lots, and all towered skyward from there. Amazing, really. And the Christmas decorations that the homeowners had contracted for were stunning as well. Okay, that’s the end of my social commentary.

I was making good time through this portion of the course as it gently eased uphill to about the 7 mile mark. I was doing a good job of pacing, and I felt fine. I took my gloves off at about mile 5, and tucked them into my waistband. I would need them later. I stayed on my GU schedule of every 4 miles, and took Gatorade on the water stops between the GU stops. The Gatorade was regular strength, but as the race went on, I started diluting it with water to make it better for my tastebuds. Once we reached the peak of the early uphill section, it was time to settle in for a long stretch of gentle downhill or flat running.

When we reached Greenville Avenue late in mile 7, I finally got the first live music of the morning. The band there at the corner was blasting out the inevitable “Sweet Home Alabama.” What is it about that song that it is seemingly played at every marathon? Right after that, we turned onto Ellsworth for a couple of miles, and we had a bunch of bands right in a row on that street. I was pleased with that. It was mostly bands with members who looked to be suspiciously close to my own age or above, but that was okay with me. That just meant they would be playing tunes that were in my wheelhouse! I heard “Gloria” and “Summertime Blues” from full-out bands, a solo acoustic tune from a young woman, and an unidentified rock tune from a band that was literally a “garage band,” in that they were set up in someone’s garage, playing to the street and those of us running by them. After those bands, we drifted down a downhill to the lake and the long journey around it. Good running here.

Around mile 8, I chatted with a guy who was a first-time marathoner, and it turns out that he had lost some 140 pounds last year, and then threw himself into fitness events, doing three 100 mile bike rides, some sprint triathlons, and now the marathon. I cautioned him to run nice and easy since it was still pretty early in the day, and then eased away from him once we hit the lake. I hope he had a good day.

Mile 9 was the last mile split before we really got going on the lake, and then we popped onto Lawther, and started that journey around water. The wind kicked into action on the lake, but it never bugged me all that much. I enjoyed its cooling effects since I was feeling a bit too warm right before that in the neighborhoods. I put the gloves back on around mile 10, and they stayed on for the rest of the race. The temperature was dropping, but the rain was staying away. Awesome! Mile 10 came and went, and it was time to check my numbers. Phase One complete.

Splits miles 1-10: 9:34, 9:10, 9:17, 9:06, 9:07, 9:15, 9:12, 9:04, 8:59, 9:04. I was taking short walks through the water stops, especially when I was taking a GU. Overall pace through 10 miles was 9:11. I could see the 4:00 pacers just ahead, so I was content with where I was. Onward.

For about 3 miles on the lake journey, it seemed like there wasn’t any live music, but it was okay. I was enjoying the trip, and I just took in the sights and sounds of the race as they came. I seem to remember that a drumming group was somewhere around mile 12, and then we found ourselves on an actual big road for a short distance, as we hit Northwest Highway. There was at least one band set up on NW Highway, and they finished up “I’m A Man” as I was running towards them. They started up “Down On The Corner” by Creedence as I passed them. Good job, boys!

After that, it was back on the road along the lake, and although there were more bands along that stretch, as well as some radio stations with their music playing, it was a fairly fallow portion of the course for memorable music. But, then again, I was supposed to be about running, right?

The half marathon point came and went, and I was pleased to note that I was at 2:00:15 at the half. Crowd support was okay at this stretch, apparently because it was easy for folks to park and stroll down to the race course. More running, more pavement, and somewhere in there, I passed Gayle, who was working out a muscle issue. Quick greetings exchanged, I moved on. About at the mile 17 mark, I started thinking about the hills ahead, and made a mental note that it would be okay to walk up the steepest portion of the hills, especially if we had made a navigational error the day before and the hills were steeper than we had seen. The 30K mark came and went, and finally we passed under a big banner proclaiming that the hills were coming…or something to that effect. I was still passing people, and I enjoyed the band right there at mile 19. They were cranking out a Creed tune, I think.

I was relieved when I saw that the hills ahead were indeed the ones that we drove the day before. And it turns out that I was able to get up them without too much agony. I shifted into a hill-climbing gear, and just chugged up them. All that Gazelles hillwork came into play there, for sure! At the 20 mile marker, we had pretty much done all the climbing that remained, and I was pretty happy to be moving along. Okay, Phase Two was complete. 10K to go.

Splits miles 11-20: 9:11, 9:06, 9:06, 9:08, 9:06, 9:31, 9:36, 9:27, 10:00, 10:17. Pace was slipping, but I was just chugging along. Water stop walks were getting a touch longer, but that was still all the walking. Overall pace down to 9:19.

At that point, I reset my goals to focus on keeping the walking down to a minimum, and to find a running gear that I could sustain. My only issue was that my legs were just hurting a bit. No bonking, no other issues, my legs were just very tired. That’s a big issue, of course, but you can handle that sort of thing.

I saw a friend of mine after mile 20, where his band was playing on the course. That was a lift to see and hear them. From there, it was a long long journey down Swiss Avenue and Lakewood. A band played “Proud Mary” at about mile 21, and another band played “Hey, Jealousy” about a mile later. It kept me going, that’s for sure. I was walking a bit here, but still mostly running. A couple of ambulances came through the runners in those last miles, which was sad to see.

Finally, mile 23 came and went. I got sick and tired of a relay runner who popped into action after the hills, though. He was one of those “Hey, runners, let’s go! Almost there! Pick it up!” guys….even though he was only 2 miles into his day, and we were at mile 23. If I could have caught him, I fear that I might have caused him bodily harm. True words.

The half marathoners merged with us after the 24 mile marker, and at that point, I decided I needed to pick it up for the home stretch. The half marathoners merging at that point were, what, 3:10 half marathoners? It wasn’t hard to get around them, that’s for sure. My mile 24 wasn’t pretty, as I think I succumbed to the Walk Daemon a bit more than I’d have liked, but from there, it was better and better.

I had a final surreal moment going under the big overpass after the half marathon merge. We went into the darkness under that overpass, and my eyes started playing tricks on me. It felt like they weren’t adjusting to the darkness, almost like they were switching on and off, flickering. I was happy to get out from under there, that’s for sure! Now we were on the portion of the course that we had run the day before, and I was once again convinced of the usefulness of such a reconnaissance run. I really knew what was coming, and that helped a lot. I enjoyed the downhill nature of the finishing miles, and I was really happy to see that final corner come up at Ross and Houston. I was passing people again during those last miles, and that’s always a confidence booster. I thought I was really moving along, but later split analysis showed that my sense of speed was perhaps distorted. At any rate, I picked it up as best as I could, and finished with a smile on my face (I think). I was done, and I didn’t even hate it!

Splits miles 21-26.21: 10:17, 10:15, 10:35, 11:45 (ugh!), 10:09, 9:34, and 0.21 miles in 2:00 (9:31 pace). Overall, I had dipped to 9:34/mile pace, and a 4:10:51 finishing time. I’ll take it.

I really needed the space blanket after this race, and I found my way to the baggage check without too much trouble. I saw David Vance at Baggage Claim, and heard about his amazing marathon debut! Post-race bag in hand, I went into the American Airlines Center for warmth and a change of clothes. The walk down to the floor of the arena looked daunting, so I found a spot in the stands to change clothes. I checked in with Frank and Randy, and found that they had left the building already. After mixing up my Endurox and changing into warm and dry clothes (how awesome is the simple warm and dry clothing thing?), it was time to head to the hotel. Oh, yeah, the band inside was really good. They were one of those 12 piece bands with horns and everything, and they were slamming on some funky tunes. Very nice.

The walk back was quite refreshing. Sure, my feet were a bit tired of things, but the walk helped my legs. I checked in with my family as I walked, and by the time I was back at Reunion, I was very happy with my day. I’ll skip the details of the interminable wait for the valet folks at the Hyatt, but I will say that Frank and I had a wonderful post-race pizza and adult beverage before hitting the road.

Frank decided to ride back with me instead of dealing with the airport, and I was grateful for the company. We had an amusing stop at a 7-11, though. I filled up the car (and it was quite cold by now outside!), and then wandered in for a Big Gulp Dr. Pepper. Yeah, boy! Anyway, we looked at snack foods and candy, and couldn’t find anything that cried out to us, so we went to check out. The girl at the counter looked up from her phone call and said to Frank and me, “Is that all you’re getting?,” meaning our drinks, and when I said yes, she said, “Okay, go on.” So, I take that to mean that her phone call was more important to her than actually waiting on customers. We laughed for 10 miles about her. Good conversation was had on the drive home, and finally the long day was over. I was happy to be home, and another marathon (number 17) is in the books.

Final thoughts: I think I got about what I deserved from the race on Sunday. I had been doing the Gazelles workouts, but I haven’t been very diligent about the recovery runs between workouts. Those extra weekly miles are important, and I will make sure I take care of that once I start back. Also, I’ve been terrible about getting to the gym for that important weight work. That will be my December project, to get back to the gym and make it a full part of the process. Other than that, I have no complaints. My nutrition was good, my long runs were good, my pacing was good, and I was rested. So, lessons learned, I’m going to enjoy my recovery time, and I’ll be back Gazelle-ing in a few weeks.

Two Of Us [Entered 11/16/07]

2007-11-10T22:52:00.000-06:00

Saturday, 11/10, it was time for the last super long run before White Rock. There's not many of us doing that race, so it was a small crew that met at 5:45 for the start of the 20-22 miler. The course was the out and back Shoal Creek run, with the finish on backwards Scenic. 21.5 for the full Monty, about 20 if you cut it by returning via Exposition.

As I've mentioned, I was still a little spooked by my illness earlier in the week, so I wasn't sure I would be able to do much with this run. I figured I'd start out with everyone, pick a nice solid pace, and just see how it went. I had all sorts of bailout options along the way, depending on how my body was reacting and how much energy I actually had. So, it was with some trepidation that I set out for the jaunt.

I settled in with Larry by the first water stop, and I figured he'd soon grow bored with my pace and would move on to catch Randy and Lizette ahead of us, leaving me to cruise the miles with only my thoughts to entertain me. However, he kept assuring me as we went up Exposition that he was happy with the pace, given that he'd run a 50 miler last weekend, and he was racing the 10 Miler in the morning. What a running animal!!

So, the second water/Accelerade stop came and went at Shoal Creek, and I was still feeling pretty good. The pace was solid, and my body seemed ready to continue. All the while, we were talking up a storm. Now, as many of you know, I'm not exactly a reticent individual. Chattering away as we run is usually my forte'. But, Larry is a nonstop source of discussion topics, and on this day, I really appreciated the fact that I could be entertained as we slogged out the miles.

Sooner than I had imagined, we were at the turnaround at Foster, and I was still feeling pretty darned good. Sure, I knew deep down that I was a little lower on stored energy than usual, but Larry kept assuring me that we were doing fine, so I just kept on cruising. We were at 1:38:00 and change at the turnaround, about 10 miles or so, which rolls out to about 9:45/mile, including all the water stops. Pretty nice, and well within training pace range.

Coming back, it still felt pretty good, and at Shoal Creek, I decided that I might as well head home on the longer route option, just in case I kept feeling good. If things caved in, I'd still probably get in 20 miles, and if I felt strong, then I just had to finish the course instead of trying to manufacture additional mileage going the other way. Larry agreed, and so we went on down 35th Street and hit the Backwards Scenic finish. We got a splash and go at the Dry Cleaners, since the weather was a bit muggy and slightly warmer than we've had lately. Still, it was a decent weather day. No real complaints there.

Scenic was actually pretty fun, and again, before I knew it, we were at the last Official Water Stop at Lake Austin and Enfield. 4 miles to go, 17.4 in the books, and I was actually almost dancing when I thought about actually finishing this thing after the week I had had. The whole dancing thing passed quickly from my mind, but honestly, I was pretty pepped up when I took physical inventory at that last stop.

That one in the books, we just had to finish the thing up. I hung with Larry and let him sort of carry me, in a metaphysical manner, down Lake Austin Blvd. to the trail. After negotiating the usual knot of runners at the Mopac bridge, we settled in for those last couple of miles. At this point, I was having some serious internal discussions with myself. Stuff like, "Okay, at the bottom of the little hill after the railroad tracks, I'm going to stop and take a walk." But, Larry was not aware of the voices in my head, and just kept talking me through the miles, so I kept running. More discussions followed, and again and again, I was able to ignore those seductive voices suggesting that I should stop running. I notice that my pace fell off during that mile, but I was still motoring along. Larry finally decided to have a bit of a fast finish with about a half mile to go, but by then, he had done his job, and I was able to pick it up a bit myself for that last half mile. Nice.

Finally, I was at the water coolers, and I could stop running. I owe Larry a huge debt of gratitude for helping me with this difficult run. I'm not sure I would have done as well without his cheerful company and encouragement. Once again, that's the sort of thing that makes me happy to be a Gazelle. It's the people that we run with that make this group what it is, under the leadership of the Pied Piper, Gilbert. On a morning that I was pretty sure would end in a truncated run, I was able to finish the full distance (21.4 miles) at a pace that was totally acceptable.

Final stats were 21.4 miles at 9:58/mile average pace, including all water stop time. Actual running pace was around 9:18/mile. Those were both good numbers for me. Sure, I didn't have the Fast Finish that I've enjoyed the last several times out, but under the conditions, this was a big win for me.

Now, I've just got to continue to improve my energy stores, enjoy these last 4 weeks of sharpening and tapering, and run a marathon. The hardest work is now done.

Thanks again to Larry for carrying me today. Awesome!

EAS Volunteer Stuff and a Pretty Neat Event [Entered 11/10]

2007-11-09T19:20:00.000-06:00

Okay, Friday I felt better, but still a little logy from time to time. No running, but lots of fluid intake, eating, and general pampering trying to bring me back up to speed. Still 4 pounds off Monday's morning weigh-in, but I have regained some of my lost self.

Friday, I visited RunTex to grab some coolers from Gilbert so that I could populate the hydration stations for the handful of us going long on Saturday for White Rock. I yacked with a bunch of my fellow Gazelle volunteers there, and scored my volunteer shirts. It should be fun and interesting to be volunteering on Sunday, especially after having seen so much of the behind-the-scenes work that goes into putting on one of these races. It's pretty amazing what all goes into the seemingly simple act of putting on a road race.

Friday night was the last football game for Anderson High School, so we went to see Jake perform with the marching band for the last time this year down at the Burger Stadium. Anderson was playing Akins, which has had a tough year, so we expected a win for our team. The game was very tight, though, 14-7 at halftime after Anderson went for it at the Akins 2 yard line with time running out at the half. They failed to convert, and trailed at the half. The band played great at the half, including a snappy version of Herbie Hancock's "Chameleon," which is a great tune. Anyway, the second half was a back-and-forth affair, and Anderson kept messing up extra points, with two of them blocked, and one missed. In fact, one of the blocked PATs was returned for a 2-point score by Akins. Things looked grim, but Anderson scratched and clawed, and managed to tie up the game very late in the fourth quarter. Akins had a tiny bit of time, though, and came down the field, leaving themselves an opportunity for a game-winning 50 yard field goal. Their coach let the clock run down to 3 seconds so that Anderson wouldn't get a chance to do anything after the kick, and called time out.

Okay, by now, parents in the stands were conferring with each other to see if we play overtime in high school in Texas (we do). We were pretty sure the guy couldn't kick a 50 yarder, so the mood was watchful, but not super nervous. The ball was snapped, the kick was partially blocked, and a lineman type picked up the ball around the 15 yard line. We started yelling that they could return the ball, which the guy knew, of course. He looked around and tossed the ball to Anderson's best player, a senior named R.P. (can't make this stuff up), and somehow, R.P. managed to weave his way through the entire Akins team, 85 yards, for the winning touchdown on the final play of his final game as an Anderson football player. It was really electrifying...honestly!

The coolest thing was right after, though. You could sense all the crowd yelling but holding their breath at the same time (impossible, but stay with me), willing R.P. through the collected players, and then in a microsecond, someone decided to let their excitement bubble over, and the psychological barrier was broken, and 100's of students swarmed the field, running down to pile on the football players and R.P., who was no doubt at the bottom of a heavy pile of humanity. The pure spontaneity of the swarm was a beautiful thing to see, and to their credit, the police on site didn't go nuts, and let the celebration of the freak play go on without too much interference. It was damned cool to see.

So, after a while, and after the poor Akins guys picked themselves up off the field where they had fallen during the runback, and after the post-game handshakes, the football team was joined by all those students on the field for the singing of the school song at the end of the game. It was one of the best things I've seen in a while.

And, for R.P., this was perhaps the highlight of his entire life. Maybe not, but geez...to win the game on such a spectacular play on the last play of your high school football career? I'm not sure how it gets better than that. Wow.

...And the Running Gods Strike Back [Entered 11/10]

2007-11-08T19:13:00.000-06:00

Well, after having such a good pace run on Monday, and then a nice relaxing 35 minute cruise on Tuesday morning, I was looking forward to doing the scheduled Wednesday workout of fartleks here in the 'Hood. As Stephen A. Smith would say, though, "HowEVah" the Powers That Control Things conspired to throw me down early on Wednesday morning with illness and destruction upon my poor little body. Was it the Arby's sandwich that I had at lunch? A stray microbe from some other establishment or food item? Or just God playing dice (which Einstein sez HE doesn't do)?

Who really knows? At any rate, I was laid low all day on Wednesday, as weak as a little kitten. I slowly crawled back to normalcy by Thursday, although I still felt like I was hungover and depleted. Yuck.

Too much sharing here in the Blogosphere? Probably. But, it is an element of entries to come.

Pace Running

2007-11-05T16:44:00.000-06:00

Monday it was time for a marathon goal pace run. Now, let me give full disclosure here, and point out that it is rare indeed that a group of Gazelles actually runs this workout at true Marathon Goal Pace (MGP). Something about the innate character of our herd makes it more of a race effort than MGP, but again, that might be just me running too fast.

The plan was to go an easy 2 miles, then pick up the last 8 miles of the Longhorn Dam Loop at MGP, or, as Gilbert suggested this morning, "Maybe a little bit faster than MGP." "Little bit" was left to the individual runner to decipher. My tentative MGP is 8:30-8:35 per mile, for a marathon goal of 3:40-3:45. I will further point out that my last two attempts at long pace runs with the group were miserable failures in the August/September time frame. I walked in on both of them, which contributed to my decision to bail on Chicago. So, today's run was very important to me on a psychological level. The physical part was just dragging my body around the trail, and wasn't nearly as critical to me as the mere fact of setting a pace and maintaining it for 8 miles, battling whatever mental daemons that might decide to visit. Weighty stuff, huh?

Anyway, about 8 of us rolled out at 5:45 on a 60 degree morning and began our journey around the trail. The two warmup miles were actually quicker than I sometimes run them, but that's more normal behavior from the group as it nervously approaches the task at hand. A quick drink of water at the rest stop on the trail, and it was time to go! Frank rolled away in a hurry, it seemed like, and Randy and Marcy also got a big lead when they decided to skip that initial water break. I found myself running by myself, trailing some of the Philly marathoners (Ward, Dennis and RuthAnn). My first mile was way quicker than I had anticipated, at 7:55, so I tried to dial the pace down on mile 2. This was unknown territory, since I haven't raced in quite a while, and as noted above, I didn't want to go out too fast and then have to slow to a crawl late. Prudent judgment of pace is the name of the game on this workout, after all. Hence the name...

Anyway, I settled down into a rhythm that felt relatively comfortable and sustainable, and just kept on a'rolling around the trail. It was pretty pleasant, and except for some concentration required on the scattered uphill bumps of the trail, I felt pretty relaxed about the whole deal. Miles rolled by, and I was checking my splits irregularly, just to make sure I wasn't going too far one way or the other off my pace. That groove took me all the way to the finish.

It was a pleasant change to have the sun come up during the workout, so we could actually see the trail surface quite well after about mile 3. That made a big difference to me today, in that I was much more secure about my footing and could just focus on the running effort instead of worrying about a misstep into a hole in the trail. I saw Randy and Marcy grabbing a quick cup of water at Mopac, but I just decided to keep on going to the finish. Let's call it racing strategy. :-) RuthAnn was taking a short water break as well on the Mopac footbridge, so I eased around her as well.

As I entered the last couple of miles, I could sense RuthAnn trailing along behind me. I didn't turn around, but judging from others who were on the trail at that time, it couldn't have been anyone other than her. I used that to keep me honest over that last stretch, making sure I kept the pace up to the finish. I only looked back one time, on the Barton Springs footbridge. It was just a quick glance, and I saw her orange singlet in my peripheral vision. Okey dokey. I could hold her off for a mile, couldn't I? I used all the sneaky racing tricks over that last mile...speeding up on any sort of rise in the trail, putting on short bursts going around corners, and accelerating a tiny bit if I heard her footsteps getting a little louder. It was sort of fun to be able to do all that for a change!

Anyway, the finish line came and went, and it was a fabulous pace run! MGP? Well, probably not, but for me, the value of having run a consistent pace effort trumped any value in having done it at my perceived MGP. What are the stats, you say? For the day, it was 10.1 miles at 8:19/mile, including the short water stop, the early warmup miles, and the pace miles. Snappy! My 8 miles of pace running were knocked out thusly: 7:55, 8:14, 8:00, 8:02, 7:52, 7:53, 7:56, 7:40, and a final 100 yards at 7:02/mile pace. The 8 pace miles were at an average of 7:56/mile, quite a bit quicker than my proposed 8:30/mile MGP.

This was a big win for my psyche today, even if it told me next to nothing about what my MGP should actually be for White Rock. :-) Oh, yeah, this was the second workout in my new speedy shoes, Mizuno Precision 7's. My Filas have expired, and the newest iteration of that shoe has not yet been released. Schade. The Precisions work nicely, although I'm not sure if they'll be my marathon shoes. Probably, but I'm not for sure yet.

Basically, the rest of the week is easy street, marking time until the 20-22 miler on Saturday. I'm looking forward to that run in a big way.

Mt. Bonnell over and over [Entered 11/5/07]

2007-11-05T12:27:00.000-06:00

And once again, I return to blogging about running and various ancillary subjects. While I was running today (Saturday) with Amy, she asked me why I wasn't writing lately. I mumbled that I was bummed out about how my training was going in late August and September, and so I just quit writing back then because I felt mopey about it. It's that low running self-esteem thing rearing its ugly head again. But, I'm going to get back in the habit of doing this blog because for one thing, it keeps me accountable in a tentative, virtual way.

So, what's been going on? Well, I bailed on going to Chicago for the marathon, which turned out to be an accidentally good decision. Who knew they'd have historically bad weather this year? Not me. But, my long training runs had been pretty terrible in September, and having to walk in on most of the 20 milers wasn't building any confidence. So, I decided at the end of September to reset my marathon target as the Dallas White Rock Marathon in December. That way, I'd get 10 weeks or more extra to train, while searching for my running mojo.

Almost immediately, I started doing better on the long runs and other workouts. The cooler weather also helped, of course, but it was also a function of regaining confidence little by little as target workouts came and went. I've had 3 really great 20 milers since then, and I've even been able to throw down some fast finishes at the end of those long runs, which was not happening at all in the summer. That brings us to today's tour of Mountain Bonnell.

We had our next-to-last 20 miler last weekend, which went great. This week we went for an easy 7 miler on Monday (I ran with Frank, which was fun), and then we had 6 x 1200m on the track on Wednesday. My times on the 1200s weren't as spiffy as last year at this time, but they were still plenty strong for my marathon goals this year.

Today, we started off with everyone, including all the AT&T folks, for a journey up to Mt. Bonnell. I really like this run for some reason. I guess rolling hills suit my particular running strengths, whatever those may be. I ran with a pod of folks, but mostly hung out with Amy. This was a rare opportunity to run the whole route with her, since we were finally on the same workout on a Saturday. For the most part, I was running today for strength and for fun, as it was sandwiched in between the two more important 20+ milers. It still had some testy bits as the road turned upward, but it was still loads of fun. Weather was nice again, in the high 50s, and that made for an enjoyable day.

Once we navigated through Scenic and up to the top of Bonnell the first time, it was an opportunity to do a GU and enjoy some chilled sports beverages with the peeps. Having tanked up, Amy and I headed down the backside of Bonnell for the out-and-back journey to the Dry Creek Saloon. For me, it's more uncomfortable to go down the steep hills than up them, but maybe I'm in the minority on that. Still, we turned around in the darkness still hanging around us, and made the ascent of the backside without undue agony. As it turns out, Alex ran by us as we were heading out to the Saloon, with Ivi, but it was so dark I didn't realize that it was him until he told me at stretching. Sorry, Alex!

After another quick water/Accelerade stop, Amy and I headed down Bonnell, up 35th, and then down Exposition. Again, I was feeling pretty good, enjoying the day. Still, it was nice to come up on the last water/Accelerade stop at O. Henry. Several groups passed in various directions as we navigated that stretch, as Expo was its usual busy running self on a Saturday morning.

Even though I said I wasn't going for a "fast finish" to this run, Amy and I did end up picking up the pace ever so gently through the last 3.2 miles. It didn't feel like a crazy acceleration, but by the end I could tell that we had eased it into a quicker gear, especially once we got to the trail.

Another day of long running in the books, and it was a fun one! Amy and I had a chance to discuss several issues of lasting importance, but, alas, those discussions stay on the trail. The old "What happens in Vegas..." deal, you know. The viral song of the day that I sprung on the crew was REO Speedwagon's "Take It On The Run," and it was a pretty strong choice. You know that one..."I heard it from a friend, who heard it from a friend, who heard that you've been messing a-round..." Poetry.

The stats were 14.95 miles of running at 9:06 actual running pace. With water stops included, we drifted to 9:47/mile. Not bad. Fast finish miles were 8:44, 8:31, 8:26, and 0.2 miles at 7:35. Altogether a good workout.

The full stretching ritual followed as we reestablished out corner outpost at Riverside and First Street, which was a fun way to polish off the day.

Just 5 weeks until White Rock, and I'm feeling better about it every day.

10K in 6 Easy Pieces

2007-08-29T20:41:00.000-05:00

Today was a long and challenging workout. We've been handed a bunch of these ladders to deal with this marathon training season, and each has had its difficulties. I've done okay on them, mind you, but they are both physically and mentally grueling.

Today, you say? After the easy warmup and drills at Zilker, we were sent out for a 3K, 2 x 2K, and 3 x 1K ladder. No real guidelines on pace, but I hoped to improve on my pace as the intervals got shorter, and wanted to have my last interval of each group be the quickest one. There was some confusion at the start, as most of the folks took off when Gilbert asked us to get started, despite his desire to have us go out in groups. I found myself trailing most of my normal peeps, but I started with Carmen, Jenny (or is it Ginny?), and Amy for the 3K loop and a half. I had thought I'd shoot for 8:00/mile pace for the 3K, but we hit the mile marker at something like 7:50, so I just stayed with the gang as we passed through a bunch of the folks who had gone out ahead of us. I was surprised at our 14:14 time for the interval. It clicked out at 1.81 miles, so that's 7:52/mile pace. Nice start. Amy had gone out ahead of us on this lap.

After we strolled across the dewy grass soccer fields to the top of the course, it was a chance to catch our breath. Once we got up there, Amy, Jenny and I matched up again, and hit the first of the 2K loops. I was feeling pretty good, and we took turns leading the way. We hit the mile marker around 7:40, and finished the 1.2 miles in 9:14, or 7:46/mile. So far, so good.

A cup of water and 2 minutes later, we were off again for our second 2K. Amy didn't have to do the second 2K, so it was just Jenny and me from this point on. We pushed each other a bit and finished that one quicker than the first, which was great to see. It had felt a bit faster, but it's good when your perception meets with reality. That one was 1.2 miles at 9:03, or 7:40/mile. Through 7K of the 10K of intervals, I was right on schedule.

Another cup of water and 2 minutes, and it was time for the 3 x 1K "half laps." The first two 1000's were Jenny and me again, and we clicked those off in 4:21 and 4:24, 7:01 and 7:06/mile respectively. On the thousands, we got bonus rest with the walk across the fields again. Still, we were happy when we reached the starting line for the last repeat. We gathered up Renee for that one, and took off. I was hoping for a fast finish, and it turned out great! We snapped across the line in 4:15, or 6:51/mile, for the last repeat.

I was tired, but pretty stoked. 10K (or thereabouts) of repeats done. That's a long day. I helped pick up all the cups around the coolers, and after chatting with Gilbert about the courses for the Saturday and Monday workouts, I headed back to RunTex with a gaggle of folks. Let's see, it was Frank, Larry, Renee, and someone else....gosh, my brain is failing me. Anyway, I was happy that we actually ran back at a true cooldown pace for a change.

Endurox and some good stretching later, and the long day was done. I scored 9.4 miles total running for the day. At least these ladder workouts have been going well. Saturday is, for me, 13-14 miles, and then Monday is the Labor Day Gazelles Pace Race 10 Miler. Yikes!

EZ Runnin' + Strides

2007-08-27T20:30:00.000-05:00

Today, Gilbert gave us an easy day after the hard long run on Saturday. We took a relaxed cruise around the 7 mile loop at Lady Bird Lake, followed by 10 x 100m striders. I started off with a small pack of people, but after about 2 miles, I found myself running alone, and that was okay, I guess. As the run wore on, I actually picked it up a little each mile, and it continued to feel pretty casual. I made a couple of micro-stops for water since we could, and still ended up with a 9:30/mile overall pace, including the water stop time. HR numbers were good, and my legs actually felt great from the start. Often, I'm a bundle of stiff and sore leg muscles on these Monday workouts, but today, no such problems. Cool.

The striders weren't too bad, either. I experienced none of the usual first strider clumsiness, and by the time we were done, I was feeling pretty sporty.

For the day, 7 miles of easy running and probably 800 meters of striders. I got in a quick 15 minute stretching session before scooting off to get Jake on the school bus. The first day of school was not as exciting for Jake and Sarah this year, as they enter 8th and 9th grade, but I think they are secretly happy that another school year is underway. Maybe. :-)

20 Miles and a Cold Soak [Entered 8/26/07]

2007-08-25T18:01:00.000-05:00

I suppose it's time that I get back on the Blog, so here's the lowdown on yesterday's (Saturday's) latest long run. A couple of weeks ago, I struggled a lot with a 20 miler, which was a fairly negative experience. I got through 18 miles okay, and then it was as if I was unplugged from the source of internal energy stores. Demoralized, I walk/jogged it in from there, and that's hard to push out of your mind. I followed that up with a blowup this past Monday on the planned pace run, which I was not able to finish. Yikes! Alex would say that letting those bad workouts stay with me is negative thinking, which would be correct. Still, my naturally sunny disposition was sorely tested by those bookend badly executed runs. I did have two good Wednesdays, though, doing a Zilker and then track-based ladder workout in consecutive weeks (details to perhaps show up in time). So, I faced the Saturday 20 miler with some shaky internal emotional wiring.

After analyzing the last 20 miler, I decided that (a) I was still probably a little tired after my yearly visit to guitar camp, and (b) I did a poor job of eating and hydrating the days leading up to that run. This week, I wasn't at guitar camp, so that was taken care of, and I did a more scientific job of loading up with carbs on Friday and Saturday morning. I used the information in the Monique Ryan nutrition book, and I was much better off this particular Saturday. No loss of power, and except for the usual long-run fatigue in those last miles, I felt pretty darned good.

The weather was the usual. Humid and warm, but it may have been a tiny bit less warm than two weeks ago. The sun stayed away until late in the run, which was a good thing. I dropped coolers at the 20 mile turnaround, and then made my way to the park at Robert E. Lee to meet the peeps for the start of our tour ("a three (and a half) hour tour"). I was ready to go by a little after 5:15am, but stayed around to see who wanted to get going with me. After some wobbling around, we finally got moving at 5:25am. Not as early as I'd hoped, but at least I had some running partners. After an initial leg to Mopac, we stopped briefly for a quick cup or two of water, just in case we were ahead of the first official water stop, wherever that was going to be. After that point, my group quickly turned into Amy, Marty and me. Amy was "just" going 14 miles, but it was great to be able to run with her again for a while. We settled into a nice relaxed groove through the hills of Exposition, and made it to the Shoal Creek water/Accelerade stop feeling pretty good. Alex and his faster people caught us just before that stop, the first of several groups that came by us during the outbound leg of the journey. Alex was exceedingly happy for so early in the morning, but that's all good. :-)

Sean was nice enough to be helping out with the water/Accelerade logistics this morning, and I got a quick chance to chat with him while I took a GU, drank plenty of water, and then moved on. So far, so good. 25% done! I had lost one of my 5 GUs somewhere along the way, so Amy was nice enough to give me one of her extra Vanilla Bean GUs to boost my supply back up. How cool is that?!

Splits, miles 1-5: 10:05, 0.4 miles at 10:10 pace, 1:01 water stop at Mopac, then 9:54, 9:52, 9:46, and 0.75 miles at 9:48. 2:34 water/Accelerade/GU stop at Shoal Creek. Relaxed running pace of 9:55/mile, excluding water stops.

We dropped Amy off at the Hancock turnaround, and she slapped the sign ceremoniously and headed back. Bye, Amy! From there, Marty and I had plenty of time to chat and discuss things of little import. Our pace quickened now that the course had leveled out a bit, and we settled into a nice mid-run effort. There was an unexpected water stop at White Rock, and we grabbed a cup or two there. Going up White Rock and up Great Northern, we were running against the tide of the Rogues as they were doing their "Lab" run. As I understand it, they do multiple loops of a 3.5 mile course. That's convenient for logistics like water, but it would be hard mentally. Anyway, we made it to the turnaround in pretty good shape. My water/Accelerade coolers had magically doubled since I dropped them off earlier in the day (Bernard and Sean put out coolers despite the ones I had left). Oh, well, better to have too much water than not enough!

Another decent water/Accelerade/GU stop later, it was time to head back south. So far, so good, even though we weren't halfway yet due to a quirk of the course layout.

Splits miles 6-9.3: 9:30, 9:20, 0.37 at 9:41/mile, 1:24 water/Accelerade stop, then 9:11 and 0.77 miles at 9:37/mile. Longer 2:32 water/Accelerade/GU stop at the turnaround. Running pace dropped to 9:42/mile overall.

Marty and I passed some more people heading to the turnaround, so we found that we weren't the last Gazelles out there. The faster folks were mostly doing 22 miles, so we had an opportunity to finish before most of them came back by us. It became a goal somewhere back in my subconscious brain. We caught Laura on Great Northern, and saw Brad and Jan coming north as we were heading back. That's always good to see your fellow Gazelles. Now that we were retracing our steps, it was a matter of watching the mileage count down as we passed the halfway point of the day's planned mileage. We hit that White Rock water/Accelerade stop on the way back, chatting briefly with Dennis, and then did the shady Shoal Creek portion on to the stop right before 38th Street. This was pretty uneventful (which, truthfully, is the way most of these long runs go), but we kept chugging along nicely through here. There was a long traffic stop at 2222, but we just enjoyed that brief respite. We laughed about how, as runners starting out many years ago, we'd jog in place at stoplights while waiting. Now, we just take those as divine intervention, and catch our breath a bit.

The 38th/Shoal Creek water/Accelerade/GU stop was briefly amusing because the cups had run out. With no new cups, we resorted to several techniques, including holding up the coolers to pour them into our mouths, using an empty ClifBlox bag as a nifty reusable cup, and finally, resorting to picking a relatively clean cup from the trash sack and reusing it. Maybe that bothers some folks, but it worked for us. Sean showed up before we left, and we actually got to use new cups, too. That was a pretty long stop, as several small pace pods passed each other, but we were ready to finish this thing. Onward!

Splits miles 10-13.4: 9:12, 0.76 miles at 9:15/mile, 1:57 water/Accelerade stop, then 0.34 miles at 8:58/mile, an 0:34 traffic light delay, then 9:02 and 9:06 to the water/Accelerade/GU stop. That was a long 4:22 stop, but what the heck. Running pace down to 9:31/mile, not including all that stoppage time. Don't worry, I'll account for it at the end!!

Renee and Leslie were just ahead of Marty and me going up and over the bridge on 35th Street, so we sort of used the old mental "elastic band" trick with them. I envisioned that I had lassoed them with an elastic band, and even though they were slightly pulling away, the tension in that imaginary band was pulling me along. I hope that they didn't feel an actual physical pull from my invisible cord! Marty stayed with me to the dry cleaners, where we grabbed a quick drink of water and doused our heads with a little water, as well. At that point, Marty told me to go on, that he needed to back it down a bit for the homestretch. After thanking him for helping me to get that far, I was off to do the Scenic route "backwards."

I stayed in the shade as much as possible, and shifted into my climbing gear for any uphill bumps, and made pretty good progress during those hilly miles. I came upon another Gazelles water/Accelerade aid station along Scenic Dr., and stopped very briefly there for two cups of refreshment. I passed up Renee and Leslie there, but they'd catch me again, later. Anthony passed me on his bike as I eased down the little hill near River Dr., and then as I made the two turns to take me along the Lake Austin portion of the route, I heard Alex's happy voice way behind me. I was making my way up that long hill when he caught and passed me, but he gave me some encouraging words as he went by, and I was doing well enough that I was able to accept those encouraging words without getting grumpy about it. That's not always the case, of course, but today, I was still hanging in there pretty strong. I managed to keep Alex in sight for most of the last bit of the Scenic route to the last official water/Accelerade/GU stop at Lake Austin Blvd., and that made me feel pretty good, as well. Finally done with the hilly stuff, all I had to do now was fight off any mental demons in the last couple of miles.

Splits miles 14-16.7: 9:19, 0.34 miles at 9:01/mile, 1:01 water stop at the dry cleaners, 0.55 miles at 9:07, 0:37 water/Accelerade stop, then 9:17 and 0.47 miles at 9:09/mile. 2:49 water/Accelerade/GU stop. Running pace 9:28/mile.

Renee and Leslie caught me and left me in the dust at that stop. They later revealed their secret strategy of running along the north side of Lake Austin Blvd., to enjoy a much more shaded running course for a mile or so. I failed to grasp that idea as I ran along by myself, but I was proud that I pushed through that long, straight stretch of sunny road without giving up too much time. After a seemingly endless passage of time, I finally reached Veterans, and was able to enjoy the fact that I was going to have a good finish to this run. My legs were tired, but I felt okay, given that I was over 18 miles into my running day. I took advantage of the outdoor shower at Mopac, and doused my head really quickly for a little extra relief, but didn't take on any more drinking water there. Dodging several groups of walkers and such on the trail didn't even bother me this morning, due to my good mood. I was even able to pick it up a little in the last bit of the run, and was very happy to reach the parking lot at Rbt. E. Lee for the big finish. Done!

Splits miles 17-20: 9:18, 0.71 miles at 9:08/mile, 0:23 water shower stop (Ahhhh...), 9:34 (trail traffic, but who cares?), and 0.43 miles at 9:09/mile. Final totals were 19.85 miles at 9:26/mile running pace. With the voluminous stoppage time included, the overall pace for the day slipped to 10:24/mile, but given the conditions, I'll take that.

After some significant huffing and puffing, I paired up with Renee for some striders (I did 4 of them), and I actually felt okay doing them. My legs felt good, at least. I've felt much worse doing striders after a really long run before, so this was a big improvement! After that, I got on my Endurox IV drip (just kidding!), and led the group in stretching. I continued to feel very good, although tired. Once we got finished with all the stretching, I joined a good crew for the Barton Springs cold soak. That was simply awesome! We had a lot of laughs after the total immersion start to the cold soak (that's just the only way to get in that chilly water), and the 30 minutes of chillin' went by in a flash. It's just amazing how much better you feel after you let the healing waters do their therapeutic thing.

We had various discussions while soaking, which seemed to be fairly focused on food by the end of the soak. Our bodies were starting to feel better, and now that the muscle aches and general fatigue were pushed back by the water, the brain was starting to tell us all to seek food in a big way.

And that's that. It was a good day of running, and it left me in a really good mood. I wasn't able to get that serious nap until the NASCAR race at night, but the soothing sounds of stock cars roaring around the short track at Bristol helped me nod off.

2 and a half laps at a time (Track 1000's)

2007-07-25T16:16:00.000-05:00

Today, we gathered the herd for a visit to the Austin High track and 1000m repeats. It was lots of running round and round the oval. Almost all of the group that I've been running speedwork with ditched me today, so it was just Dennis, Amy and me as a pace pod. I guess it must have been something I said. :-)

Gilbert asked us to run the 1000's at the same pace as the 1200's from last week. That made sense to me, since I had noticed that the 1200's were done at a faster pace than the 1000's a few weeks prior to that. We aimed for 4:30 per 1000m, or about 7:15/mile. I did 5 x 1000m the last time we did this workout, so I set out to do at least 6, maybe 7 repeats today.

After a slightly slower 4:35 first 1000, we really got the bus rolling. The splits were 4:35, 4:31, 4:31, 4:30, 4:30, and a last 4:20. Gilbert told us 6 was a good number, and I was pleased that we were so consistent and that I could get faster on the last repeat. Except for that last repeat, I felt fairly comfortable. Stressed, but not unduly so. Was it 10K pace? Not really. But it was right in line with the 1200's.

Frank and I did our 200m striders, and then after some chatting with Gilbert about this weekend's long run route, Frank, Colleen and I headed back to RunTex.

I scored 8.45 miles for the day. Full stretching with Colleen, and I was off. I stopped at Gold's Gym for a quick core/upper workout, and then got cleaned up so I could get my massage from Ron. The massage found lots of junk in my quads and calves, but as usual, Ron worked all that out. I'm ready now for the long 20 miler on Saturday, and with a little recovery jogging tomorrow, it'll be a pretty solid workout week.

I've got plenty to do to get ready for guitar camp next week, but that easy 45-50 minute run tomorrow morning should be just the ticket to get me going.

Easy running in the Hood [Entered 7/25/07]

2007-07-24T16:14:00.000-05:00

Yep, it's Tuesday, and that meant another easy run here in the 'Hood. I ran again in the new Creation 8's, a mere 45 minutes to shake loose some of the junk remaining from yesterday's pace run. I averaged 9:23/mile, and I felt much better after the run than before. No gym visit, though, due to errands galore.

Pace Running [Entered 7/25/07]

2007-07-23T16:00:00.000-05:00

Monday, I showed up, vocal chords shot from all the jabbering at the reunion parties over the weekend, for a pace run with the Gazelles. I'd missed the first one of the training season a few weeks ago, so I was keen on getting this one in today. Weather was in ditto land, so we can dispense with that.

Kenny was there with Bernard to administrate the workout, since Gilbert was in Missouri for the day. The workout for us was a 3/5 run. That is, 3 miles nice and easy for warmup, and then 5 miles at a theoretical marathon goal pace (MGP). As usual, MGP is a concept that we trample over during these workouts. Just like "80% effort" and "10K pace," these suggestions tend to get put aside once the runs begin.

I did my easy 3 miles with Colleen and David(?), and we arrived at the mobile water stop all ready to go. I grabbed a couple cups of Accelerade and water, and then took off. My sense of pace was probably off, and I darted ahead of everyone for a mile or so. I was definitely too fast for the first mile or two, but it felt okay, so I just found a pace that felt tolerable and soldiered on. I got caught by the time we reached the water stop at Austin High School, and then after a quick cup of water there (only 13 seconds for that one), I took off again. I got caught once more as we hit the trail on the south side of Town Lake, but settled in and managed to recover my pace for the last mile.

It was definitely too fast, but for a workout I'll take it. Splits were: 10:11, 9:55, and 0.93 miles at 9:16/mile (warmups), then a 1:57 water/accelerade stop. Pace miles were 7:59, 8:06, 0.54 miles at 8:07/mile, 0:13 water stop, 8:21, 8:05, and 0.48 miles at 7:43/mile. I averaged 8:08/mile for the pace miles, including the brief water stop. Overall, including all water stop time, I was at 8:59/mile for the 8 mile day. Altogether a good workout. I easily managed to drop my pace over a minute from the 3 mile warmup to the 5 mile pace running, so mission accomplished.

Next time, I'll start out slightly easier on the pace miles, maybe 8:15-8:30/mile, and hope to finish strong.

Once we were done, I did 4 x 100m striders and then called it a day. 8.2 miles for the workout to start the week.

Most of the full stretching regimen followed, and my day was done.

When the Rain Comes... [Entered 7/25/07]

2007-07-20T15:44:00.000-05:00

Friday, I had to get in my short long run (yep, it's oxymoronic) before leaving for a weekend of moderate debauchery at my 30th year high school reunion. I visited the gym yesterday for 30 minutes of indoor cycling and a core/upper body workout, by the way. Anyway, I got down to a deserted RunTex early on Friday, under threatening skies. I sat in the car for a bit, to see if the weather would either go ahead and let loose (as it did) or blow over. I had plenty of time to get the run in, so I had that luxury.

I guess I dozed off a bit as the rain pattered on my windshield, because the next thing I knew, Gilbert was knocking on my window. I got out and chatted with him briefly, and then he flew off with the Bomb Runners. It started raining pretty hard right after that, so I almost decided to bag the run entirely. As it was, I'd have to leave the iPod in the truck due to excessive rain. I moved the truck in preparation for leaving, and then finally decided to just get out and try running. I made a deal with myself to just get out and run at least the Longhorn Dam route. That worked, and I hit the trail by about 6:15am.

From there, it was a series of psychological tests, as I passed various opportunities to cut the run shorter. I ended up doing the full Grove loop, with only a couple of large streams to jump over east of the Longhorn Dam, and with only the one detour through Zilker Park around Point Neff. As it turns out, I think I could have gone around Point Neff, but that's not a big deal. It was fun to be able to actually run most of the trail, after it's been under water in spots for several weeks.

I did just one GU during this journey, and supplemented my CamelBak with stops at the Holly power plant, Mopac and between First Street and the old power station. This was sort of a cruise, in alternating heavy and light rain, and I ended up drenched but happy that I made the effort. I scored 13.8 miles at a relatively pedestrian 9:40/mile average, including water stop time. I was around 9:15/mile actual running speed.

So, except for extremely squishy shoes (first run in new Creation 8's), it was a good effort.

For the week, 25.6 miles in three runs. My calves feel fine after the big cramping last weekend, so I'm back on track.

Now, about that reunion? Maybe I'll report on that later...

Fast Stuff, 3 Laps at a Time

2007-07-18T18:55:00.000-05:00

Finally, Wednesday I headed down to rejoin my Gazelles friends for a track workout. It's been a while, so I was looking forward to seeing everyone. My leg felt pretty good this morning, and it was even somewhat cooler out there. Can't complain about that!

Gentle warmup running led us to the track at AHS, and we split up into two bunches to do the drills. Gilbert set up the groups, and off we went. He told my group to aim for 400m splits in the 1:45-1:50 range. That's 5:15-5:30 per 1200m. Okey dokey.

I led the first couple of repeats, and we gently picked it up each repeat, right in range. The 1200's didn't seem any harder than 800's or 1000's, even though our pacing was the same. Go figure. The group had thinned down by the third repeat, which we clicked off even quicker. For the fourth and last repeat, we let the hammer down a bit, and kicked the pace faster still. I'm very happy with our times, especially considering how I felt just Monday! The 1200 splits were 5:27, 5:24, 5:23, and 5:15, so that's exactly as ordered. The 1200's were in a modest 7:13/mile average pace, but I'm pleased all the same.

Dennis and I did our 3 x 200m striders, and it was only on the third strider that the left calf barked at me a bit. Nothing big, but I could tell that was quite enough for my legs today. I ran back to RunTex with Colleen, and got caught up on her travels as we ran.

For a change, I stayed and did the full stretching, and that felt pretty good. Rachel hung out with us, along with Lisa, so it was like old home week. Gilbert told me that I had looked "tired" during the track work, which I can only attribute to my somewhat dodgy musculoskeletal condition. I felt pretty good today, but I suppose I appeared to be off form.

For the day, 7.22 miles. I'll aim to do a super easy HR run tomorrow, in the 45-50 minute range, and get in a gym visit. Friday, I have to do the scheduled Grove run (about 13.5 miles) on my own because of my high school reunion this weekend. But, I'll be back for Gazelles on Monday, whatever the workout may be. Busy, busy.

Step, Ouch, Step, Ouch! [Entered 7/18/07]

2007-07-17T18:47:00.000-05:00

Monday and Tuesday...the calf recovery continued. I woke up ready to go on Monday for the scheduled easy running and circuit work, but I was severely hobbled. My calf hurt to the point that I wasn't moving at all normally, so after taking some ibuprofen, I climbed back into bed. Discretion being the better part of valor and all that stuff... I spent Monday gently stretching and massaging my calf, trying to get it to the point that it functioned better. After some walking around and careful attention, it felt better by the end of the day. But, there was no running on Monday. Tuesday, I continued the self-treatment, and then headed down to let Ron work my legs over. I suffered a bit more than usual, due to the residual effects of the calf cramp and my failure to stretch after the long run on Friday. But, by the end of the massage, he was able to work the calf pretty deeply, and I wasn't begging for the deep tissue work to end. So, I was assured that I hadn't messed up anything too badly, and that was a big relief. I even got out Tuesday evening for a gentle 45 minute jog, right at 4.6 miles, just to get the legs moving a bit. It didn't even hurt to run, so I was quite happy about that. Gazelles on Wednesday!!

A Week At the Beach [Entered 7/18/07]

2007-07-15T17:47:00.000-05:00

We drove all day on Sunday to get to Gulf Shores, AL, and our family beach vacation with my siblings and my Mom. 12 hours in the car is a little rugged, but except for a stretch where I had to drive through a driving rainstorm, it was uneventful. It was great to spend a week with everyone in one place, and we did a good job building some fairly complex sand structures. Tuesday, we built the Sydney Opera House complex, and that turned out great. It was funny to see who recognized one of the 10 most recognizable buildings in the world. At Gulf Shores, it was about a 40% recognition rate, not including young kids. I'll post some pics once I get them downloaded. Wednesday, after a kid asked us if we'd ever built a sand submarine, I came up with the somewhat demented idea of a large submarine being attacked by a large sea creature. The whole sand sculpture ended up about 18 feet long, with a large sub being engulfed by a creature that had characteristics of a giant squid, a crab, a lizard, and a shark. Again, pictures may reveal things more clearly. This one was a big hit. Thursday, we finished up our presentation (we had sand groupies by this point in the week) with a large-scale Porsche convertible loosely based on the 911 model. We built this one big enough that smaller children could sit inside of it, and we had a dozen or so people come over and pose their children in the sand car. That was probably the most fun, but the sub/monster combo was the better sculpture. Friday, we had to start the journey back.

The running, you say? Well, I was not very inspired. I woke up Monday through Wednesday at the beep of my watch at 5:45am, and utterly failed to leave the room on any of those early mornings. C'est la vie. I wish I could report that I diligently got out there and did some miles, but alas, I did not.

However, I knew I had to do the scheduled 18 miler at the very least. So, on Friday, after gorging myself on Mellow Mushroom pizza on Thursday night, I was up and out of the condo at 5:45am, running. I had checked Gmap, and found that I could head west towards Ft. Morgan (a historic fort from Civil War times), and it was almost exactly 9 miles to the end of the peninsula. So, it was easy directions for the 18 miler. It was muggy, but somewhat overcast, so I had about as good conditions as could be expected in southern Alabama in mid-July. With the GPS synched, the iPod loaded, a Camelbak with 32 ounces of ice water, and a 20 oz. bottle of Gatorade, I set out, exited the property onto AL 180, and headed west.

It proved to be much more of a mental test than I had anticipated. I've never run more than 16 miles by myself in one run, so this was a new personal record. I drank from the Gatorade on the way out, finishing it up somewhere around mile 7, and got rid of that handheld distraction. I did my GU every 3-4 miles, and walked through all the water stops. I figured I'd just keep moving since I was alone, even though I'd shorten the actual running distance a little doing it that way. There was a volunteer fire department, several bird watching conservatories, a lot of traffic with people towing boats to the end of the pier, and of course, lots of condos along the way. The road was almost arrow-straight for the most part, which was both good and bad. It was good that people could see you from a long way away, and thus was safer, but it was bad in that you couldn't make a mental game of getting to a corner ahead. The road was pretty darned flat, as well. I started craving a hill, just for variety. :-)

I reached the end of the ferry pier, did my sun pose looking back east and then into Mobile Bay for a bit, sipping water, and then it was time to head back. I was working harder and harder, it seemed, as I turned back into the sun, heading east, but I focused on getting to the next landmark one at a time, trying to break up the journey into bits that I could manage. I took my last GU (actually, it was an Enervitene I had left over from Indy) at about mile 13.5, finished off my water (it would have been great to have another cold bottle of water at that point!), and fought my way home. There was a big water tower at the Beach Club entrance, and I finally spotted it about the time I did that last water stop. The bad thing was that it was so large, and the road so straight, that it was a lot farther to the finish than I would have liked. Oh, well. With the count on the iPod at something like 40 songs so far, I trudged on. My pace was slowing a bit due to the heat, but I kept at it, and soon enough, the actual entrance to the condo place appeared. After rubbing my eyes to make sure it wasn't a mirage, I gratefully turned into the drive, and finished the run off with a modicum of style.

The run was just under 18 miles (17.98). With all water stop time included, it was 9:54/mile pace. That's a bit slower than usual, but with the combination of a solo run and less than ideal water supplies, I'll take it. The main thing is that I got out there, finally, and knocked out the most important run of the week. Actual running pace was more like 9:30-9:35/mile. I probably covered a half mile of that total during my walk-through water stops.

I found my way to the pool area, and spent a few luxurious minutes letting the beach shower cool me off. That was truly a great feeling. I figured I'd kick off my shoes before getting back under the shower for a more thorough dousing, and instead, I caused a massive calf cramp in my left leg as I pointed my foot downward. Ouch!!!!! It was one of those cramps that you can see. It looked like a small mouse had crawled under my skin. All I could do was sit down carefully and grab the cramped muscle with my thumbs, pressing on it. Eventually, and it seemed like a very long time, the cramp crawled out of my calf (you could feel it slide away under my thumbs), and I could breathe again. Man, that hurt!! I gingerly took off the other shoe, and enjoyed that cool shower some more, and then headed back upstairs to get going on our homeward journey.

I should have stretched, I should have iced the calf, and I should have taken ibuprofen. But, instead, we walked to the beach one more time, enjoyed the early morning sounds and sights on the beach until about 10:00am, and then it was time to go. I did chug an Endurox (12 oz.) and another Gatorade (20 oz.), along with a bottle of water, so I wasn't totally a post-run goof, but I certainly wasn't practicing what I preach to other runners. :-) After cramming the Tahoe full of our gear (we don't pack lightly when we drive somewhere), it was time to start back to Texas.

I suffered from my lack of stretching every time we stopped for gas or food. I tried to plead with the stretching gods by gently stretching at all those opportunities, but they weren't having much sympathy for me. Sigh... We had bad traffic issues, big rain, and other road maladies on Friday, but we finally made it to Baton Rouge around 5:00, and found a hotel for the night. We celebrated by having some Mexican food there (we had had plenty of seafood during the week, so it was time to get back to other cuisine). I slept the sleep of the very fatigued that night, and although I was very sore on Saturday, I was mostly rejuvenated. At least that portion of the drive only featured the usual craziness around Houston.

So, a good vacation, one quality run, small pangs of guilt over missing the other runs, and no sunburn. Good times...

Weekly Summary [Entered 7/18/07]

2007-07-07T17:26:00.000-05:00

The end of the July 4th week featured a couple of workouts and runs. Thursday, the 5th, I got out for a super easy HR run of about 6 miles, at 9:30/mile pace, and hit the gym for a leg/core workout. I cut some of the core stuff a little short (only single sets of the Roman Chair exercises), but did the full leg workout. A rather quiet workout day, but at least I got the work in. That night, I had a guitar ensemble gig in Bastrop, which was a good chance to play all of our repertoire in front of an audience before we did our wedding gig on Saturday. I made a couple of nervous flubs, but it wasn't terrible. All in all, I'm glad we got the chance to play, and we're certainly ready for the wedding now.

Friday, I hit the gym again for a cycle/upper body workout. I did 30 minutes on the cycle, using the model of indoor cycle that they use for the spinning classes (it has more of flywheel setup, which feels more bike-like to me), and then had a good stretching session. Due to time constraints, I went right to the upper body exercises after that, and it went well enough. I continued my negative contraction emphasis and slowed down the exercises, which made them much tougher. Also, on bench, I did the second set at 95 pounds instead of 85, and although I was only able to do 6 reps at 95 lbs., it was pretty cool to finally see the 25 lb. weights on the bar instead of two 10 lb-ers. Aesthetically, it was more pleasing.

Saturday, I made my final long run with the Gazelles for many weeks to come. Due to vacations and other weekend commitments, I'll be missing the next 4 weekend runs. Anyway, Saturday was muggy but not quite as warm, and it ended up raining on us in the last 3 miles. A fairly pleasant weather day, actually. The course was moderately hilly, with a tough middle section featuring a new hill on River Street. I had a good time, running with Renee, Lisa C., Sue and Amy for the most part, along with some other folks. In keeping with my new long run pacing strategy, it was more fun than usual, and we stayed right at 9:15/mile pace for most of the actual running. Renee, Lisa, Sue and I added some extra distance at the end of the run to bulk the run up from 10 miles to just under 13, and it was just fine. The conversation was enjoyable, and we got the work done. We had to stretch a little from the last water stop to the finish, some 6 miles, but with the rain saving us a little, it didn't cause problems. I just did one GU today, at 5 miles, but again, on a somewhat shorter run, that wasn't an issue, either. I scored 12.8 miles, more or less, at something like a 9:18/mile running pace. With water stops, it moved to 9:45/mile. All good, and my HR numbers were solidly in the long run training realm. I'll tag this as a very successful "short" long run.

I led the stretching for the last time until August, after some form drills and bouncing and hopping with Gilbert. A fun day at the running office, for sure.

For the week, I was right at 30 miles (I skipped the second recovery run on Tuesday), and I feel very rested and ready for the week ahead.

Oh, yeah, the wedding gig went very well. It's super easy to play those type events, because no one really cares about the music...they just want to see the bride and groom do their thing and then hit the reception for the wine and champagne. :-) It stormed on us coming back from Georgetown, but that was the only negative for the event. Off to Alabama now!

Tempo Racing & A Gym Visit

2007-07-04T12:17:00.000-05:00

Independence Day morning a hardy group gathered at RunTex for the scheduled tempo run/race. Since the trail is still flooded in several key spots on our normal course, Gilbert had us do a longer 2 mile warmup over east on the trail to a spot on Lakeshore Dr. After a quick cup of water, and a final admonishment to run this at something like 10K pace plus 10 seconds/mile (yeah, right!), we were sent off.

The course was a point to point affair, instead of the usual out-and-back, which made for a different experience. There was none of the usual greetings from our fellow Gazelles as we hit the turnaround, and the course was ever so slightly tougher than the usual route. No worries, though. I started out near the back of the pack, and by the end of mile 1, I was running alone just ahead of Courtney (?), who I passed near the Longhorn Dam. At the end of mile 2, near the softball fields, I was feeling okay, and I had been pretty consistent with my pacing. Now it was time for a little negative split action. I saw Karen and her new dog as she was training it going the opposite direction, which was pretty cool. I thought I was dragging during mile 3, but it turns out I was picking it up then. During the last mile, I freely admit that I was digging the 1/4 mile markers as they counted down the race. Again, I thought I was slowing down even more during mile 4, but those feelings were due to my increased speed, not to a bonking event. Vasil was ahead of me then, and I was slowly catching him, but with a half mile to go, he decided to pick it up to stay ahead of me (he told me this later). It worked for both of us, though, and after negotiating the little drops and climbs around the rowing center, I held it together pretty well to the finish just past the Congresss bridge. My time was slightly slower than the last tempo run, but that course is very slightly shorter than this one, so it was a wash. My pace was the same as last time out, 7:40/mile.

Splits: 7:47, 7:49, 7:39, 7:27. 30:42. For the day, 6.35 miles of running action.

We walked from the finish, crossed over Town Lake at First Street, and then the bottom fell out of the sky, giving us the rain that had been hovering in the area. We trundled over to RunTex and huddled under the awning while Gilbert gave us an advance look at Saturday and Monday, and then we got out while the rain was temporarily stopped to knock out 6 striders in the parking lot at the Chamber of Commerce building. Yee haw.

I messed around a while, and then finally got the stretching done. After that, I just hung out for a while and enjoyed the company of my running pals. Lisa and I chatted, and then it was time to get going finally. Let's go to the gym!

I noshed on a PowerBar as I drove up to Gold's, and so I was charged up enough for the work ahead. I changed out of the wet running clothes and put on dry gym clothes, which was actually sort of silly, but what the heck. Core workout was floor exercises and a serious set of planks. I bumped up the time on planks to a full minute each, which was pretty tough, but it's where I need to be with those. Upper body was the full version of that workout, using the negative concentration technique and the new order of exercises as well. Thanks again, Marty, for your suggestions! I went up to 95 lbs on the second set of bench press, as an experiment, and was able to grind out 6 unassisted reps. Amazing how much 10 pounds can seem! Then, dumbbell chest flies, and finally tricep pulldowns. Those tricep extensions were pretty rough, and doing them slowly really increased the "Yowser" factor. Then, it was time for the other side of the body, and I did lat pulldowns and then bicep curls. Curls are way tougher when I do them properly, but I know they're doing some good.

Now, I was done and the rest of July 4th can be all fun and games. Maybe the rain will stop at Wimbledon and they'll actually play some matches today!

Oh, yeah. I was reminded once again, when I heard two tunes from it today on the iPod, that Run DMC's album, "Raising Hell," is just awesome. It never fails to make me smile when I hear those phat beats and actual LP vinyl scratching by JamMaster J. And the rapping over the top of that foundation is just too much fun. It's on my top 30 all-time list of albums. I say, "Check it out!" You be illin'.

GymStuff [Entered 7/4/07]

2007-07-03T12:11:00.000-05:00

Tuesday, I failed to do the recovery run. Oh, well. But, I did get to the gym for a nice workout, so I'll give myself a "B minus" for the day. Started with a different cycle, one like the model they use in spinning class, and it did feel smoother than the electronic versions that I've been using. Just 12 minutes on that to get my legs warm. Then, I did a good long stretching routine, which felt great. Core workout was floor exercises and the evil Roman Chair exercises, and I was surprised to find that I wasn't too sore from yesterday's circuit workout. On legs, I really piled it on. I did the full routine, and experimented with emphasizing the negative (lowering) cycle of each repetition, which did make the exercises more difficult. I also incorporated the idea of moving from larger, more complex muscle groups to smaller, more specific ones, and that changed the way some of the exercises felt. All in all, I was pleased with the workout, and no one broke into my car this time, so I'll score this as a success. :-)

Circuits and a New Window

2007-07-02T10:43:00.000-05:00

I was sporting my homemade cardboard and plastic (and duct tape) passenger window on the Tahoe as I made my way down to RunTex for the long warmup circuit workout today. It was raining pretty insistently as I drove, so I was happy that my cardboard engineering worked as well as I had hoped. It was quite strange not being able to see out of that side window, though. I never realized how much I use that side mirror until it was not available. :-)

Anyway, with the trail flooded in a bunch of places, we had to modify our long warmup route to Austin High School, going to the north side of the trail at Congress, but I felt really great doing so. Lately, I've been dragging a bit on the warmups, getting to the workout site towards the last of the pack, but today, that was not the case. The drainage canal near Austin High was totally full, so we had to do a long detour around that. Still, it came to 2.35 miles of warmup. Gilbert had us start doing circuits immediately, so we threw ourselves into the routine upon arrival. It was the usual circuit, with two additions. The first was that the guys had to do 6 pullups at the end of each circuit (I scored 4, 6, 5 and 4, which is better than the last time we tried these!). The second was that on each circuit starting with the second one, we were to do one round of medicine ball tosses. Those can start wearing on you a bit by the time you get to the later stages of each set.

After four circuits (400m runs between), Gilbert called us over to the Forum for extra stuff. Today, we just did the 15/30/45 deal and the Arch/Smash set, ending with 2 x 1:00 of "Fast Feet." I did much better on the core stuff today, so the gym work is starting to show its worth. That's very cool. Kudos to Alex and Anne for their stints singing the "Iyo Ngwe" song during Fast Feet! Woo-hoo-hooooooo!

I ran back with Alex, Frank, Vasil and Colleen, but Frank peeled off at Pfluger to do the longer cooldown run today.

I felt strong all day, and that's a relief after my unpleasantness after the 16 miler. No signs of residual dehydration, muscle cramping, or anything like that. Cool.

For the day, just over 5 miles. This week is intentionally lower in mileage to allow our bodies to recover and rebuild, so I'm looking forward to it. Next week will be a challenge while I'm on vacation at the beach, especially the 18 miler, but I hope to be up to that test.

I didn't get a chance to hang around afterwards, as I had to get up to the auto glass place for my 8:15 appointment to get a new passenger side window in the Tahoe. I made it with time to spare, and they were finished well within their estimates, so that was relatively painless. Now I can see again!

Sweet Little Sixteen

2007-06-30T16:14:00.001-05:00

Maybe not "sweet," but it was sixteen miles this morning. Due to the vast quantities of water being poured through Mansfield Dam, Town Lake has become a semi-raging river for a change, and it's way over the banks at most of the low-water spots of the trail. I took a look this morning, and it's almost 4 feet deep at the low-water crossing near Austin High, and the rowing center is entirely under water. Amazing, really.

I say all that to report why we started today's jaunt from Austin High School instead of RunTex. From RunTex, we'd have to do some serious cross-country bushwacking to avoid the big water, so Gilbert chose a new starting spot and we revised the planned route. Instead of the Grove loop, which I enjoy very much, we had to go to our backup plan of the out-and-back Shoal Creek run. The Shoal Creek route is pretty easy to administrate with water/Accelerade, but out-and-back courses can be sort of dull sometimes.

Weather was muggy, warm, yadda yadda yadda. The sun came out with about 4 miles to go, but it didn't make it that much worse. After a little talk from Gilbert ("Don't try to impress the other Gazelles this morning, just run nice and easy"), we set out for our journey. There were multiple distance options, but for those of us running Chicago, it was pretty much a 16 mile day. I settled in with Marty, and watched almost everyone else scurry on ahead. I was running based on feel and later by HR, trying to keep the effort level appropriate for a long run. With the heat, I want to finish the long runs feeling sort of strong (today, Gilbert said it was not a "fast finish" run), so I'm perhaps being too cautious. We'll see as the season progresses.

The first few miles saw us getting down to our working pace, and once we turned onto Enfield and its hills, it was time to tank up at Gilbert's rolling water/Accelerade stop. Working with Pete's suggestions about summer hydration, I chugged down 4 total cups (16 oz) of fluids. As warm as it seemed already, and with the hilly terrain that we'd face off and on, it seemed smart. I took off from that water stop with Marty, but fairly soon on Exposition, I found myself running alone through the hills. This was where I switched to HR as a guide for effort. I chose an arbitrary "long run" number, and tried to stay around that HR number for the next 5 miles or more. It would ease up a bit on the hills, but it recovered quickly on the flats and downhills. I caught up with Monique, Laura and others at the overpass at Mopac, and cruised along with them for a bit, until we got passed by Thon and Carrie. I tagged along with those two to the second water/Accelerade stop at Shoal Creek. Tons more fluids, and I experimented today with a gel from the Accelerade/Endurox folks at this stop. I was sweating up a storm, but I felt okay. So far, so good.

Splits miles 1-5: 10:02, 9:07, 0.62 miles at 9:02/mile (2:02 water/Accelerade stop), 9:11, 9:23, and 0.73 miles at 9:23/mile (3:07 water/Accelerade/Accel Gel stop). Running pace was 9:23/mile for actual running, and 10:20/mile with stops.

Now we were on the sneaky uphill trip up Shoal Creek. It seems flat in spots, but it's mostly a gentle uphill. We used to enjoy this feature when the marathon course went down Shoal Creek, but that's changed with the new loop course. C'est la vie. I was alone all the way to the turnaround point on Great Northern, running as a HR slave, but it worked out well for me. I felt fine, and it was probably good to practice running alone since I'm going to have to do my 18 miler in a couple of weeks solo. As the various Gazelle pace pods turned around at 10, 12, or 14 miles, it was a boost to give them all shout-outs as they passed me going back to the finish. I sort of lost my mathematical skillz during this stretch, and so I couldn't decide how much further it was to the turnaround, even though I put the water and Gatorade out this morning before I went down to AHS. Go figure. Anyway, soon I reached Great Northern, and met up with Leslie, Lisa and their crew as they finished their water stop. They dashed off, and I hooked up instead with Eric and Colleen for the return trip. Again, I took onboard 4 cups of fluids, and took my second Accel Gel. Let's go south, shall we?

Splits miles 6-8: 9:15, 9:06, 9:18, 0.22 miles at 8:56/mile. Long 3:52 water/Gatorade/Accel Gel stop. Running pace 9:19/mile, right on target. With water stop time, 10:22/mile.

Heading back, it was a relief to cruise along with Colleen and Eric. I could just follow along with the pace they were setting, and was able to let my mind wander for a while. The course was generally downhill with a few bumps, and except for crossing 2222 and trying to take on a motorcycle and a delivery truck, we had an uneventful run to the Shoal Creek water stop. Rogue was there this time with their own water stop, but we stuck to our own supplies, tanked up, and moved on. It was time to focus on finishing with some strength.

Splits miles 9-12: 9:13, 9:17, 9:02, and 0.22 miles at 8:47/mile. Last water/Accelerade/GU stop was a pedestrian 3:16. Running pace 9:16/mile. With water stop time, 10:18/mile.

Now it was the point in every long run where the conversation becomes more and more muted, reducing itself finally to grunts, finger pointing (directional, not obscene) and single-word answers. The toughest stretch of the run came at the end, with the hills of Exposition and the overpass on 35th Street. I followed Eric and Colleen up and over the overpass, and after saying that I didn't plan on a "fast finish," I guess I was relatively faster through the hills, and once again found myself running alone by the end of the long first hill coming down Exposition. It was no longer a HR run at this point, I was merely trying to stay focused on the job at hand (or foot), aiming to finish in pretty good fashion.

There wasn't a water stop at O. Henry, since we were finishing just a mile and a half further on, but it was still sort of a bummer to pass by there without a quick pick-me-up. Oh, well. I felt like I was crawling by now, without any point of reference except my now warped internal pace clock. (I did not look at my watch after the last Shoal Creek water stop). I resolved to finish this run without walking, to give me something to work towards in the last mile or so. On Lake Austin Blvd., I saw Alberto, an ex-Galloway person, who was race-walking towards my finish line. I found an opening, and crossed over to chat ever so briefly with him before "kicking" to the finish. It felt really good to turn onto Veterans and enjoy that downhill, and except for being a bit disappointed to notice that I wasn't at 16 miles yet (at Mopac), I figured I'd meet my goal. Steve popped out of nowhere at Mopac, where I presume he was grabbing a quick cup of water. He helped me push to the finish, amid all the foot traffic, cars, and folks just checking out the flooding at Town Lake. I kept running until the watch ticked over 16 miles, and was grateful to have finished.

Splits miles 12-16: 9:26, 9:09, 9:03, 8:38, and 0.15 miles at 8:13 (thanks, Steve!). Actual running pace dropped to 9:12/mile, right on target, and with water stop time, I was still okay at 9:59/mile. I came up with 15.94 miles of actual running.

I was feeling quite a bit goofy when I finished, and it took a long time for me (it seemed) to catch my breath at the car. I grabbed the stretching gear and started drinking my Endurox right away. I felt like I was not right, so it was time to get into body-repair mode. It was already just after 8:30am, so I went over and dropped the ropes off, asked Alex to be the StretchMeister this morning, and went over to Gilbert's coolers to get even more fluids. I'm sure I looked ghastly. I know I felt pretty bad.

I did some high-knee form work to get my hips and legs loose (walking versions of those drills), and got several cups of water and Accelerade at the coolers to supplement the Endurox. Even after all that, I was still a little dizzy, so I shuffled back to the stretching area, and eased into the stretching a few exercises behind everyone else. Today, I was mostly the stretching advisor and not the leader. Alex did a great job taking over for me. I moved pretty slowly, drinking all the fluids I had with me, and got about halfway done with the stretching. At that point, I felt like little electrical pulses were shooting through my legs, which I did not take as a good sign. So, up again, and I took a towel with me to the coolers, where I soaked it in icy water to try to bring my temperature down. I also filled up my water bottle again for more hydration.

That series of treatments helped a lot, and I was able to finish up my somewhat abbreviated stretching routine at the same time as the group at large. After 40-50 ounces of post-run fluids and a cold towel, I was starting to feel more human, and even stopped at the Gazelles Store to purchase a very orange singlet to add to my collection. Contrary to folklore, I do not own every piece of Gazelles gear...but I do have a healthy sampling of same. :-)

I chatted for a while with folks as I slowly made my way to the car. I noticed a group of unicycle enthusiasts (6 of them! only in Austin...) trying to get through the deep water at the crossing on their unicycles, which just looked stupid to me. The current was really ripping just 20 feet away in the lake, after all. Oh, well. Darwin's Principles thinning the herd, I guess. :-)

Uneventful drive home, and I was happy to get back. Even after the aggressive hydration during and after the run, I was down 3 pounds when I got back. I'll work on that today and tomorrow, to try and get back up to speed. I feel okay now, but I am certainly tired.

My HR numbers, interestingly enough, were spectacular. Overall HR was right on, and I spent a much larger percentage of my running day in the happy zone than I've done in the past. All that, and the running pace was still well within the "1/2 to 1 and 1/2 minutes slower than MGP" guidelines that we hear about so often. So, except for scaring myself with my dehydration/bonking/whatever, this was quite a good run for me. Next weekend is, mercifully, a "recovery" long run, so we get to back down a few miles. The whole week is a little less intense, as well, which I believe is intentional. It's a chance to rebuild our bodies a bit after a pretty tough week of training.

For the week, I tipped the mileage scales at 42.5 miles. 5 runs, fitful but okay gym compliance, a new core workout tried, and one broken passenger window on the Tahoe. A full and fruitful week. May next week be even happier.

Gym, Cycle, and a little B&E Action

2007-06-29T18:33:00.000-05:00

Interesting visit to Gold's today. I got there after lunchtime, parked, and went inside for fun and exercise. The people watching was pretty good today, by the way. Started off with 25 minutes of cycling, and the legs felt great after spinning away for a while. I saw Marty while I was on the bike, and we chatted a bit about how I should organize the various exercises in my routine, specifically the upper body stuff. He gave me some great tips, which I utilized later on in the workout. Anyway, I got in a good stretching session after the cycle, and decided to save the core stuff until I got home, since none of the exercises on my schedule required gear at the gym. I did a quick 3 exercise set of leg weights since I didn't get to the gym yesterday (quad extensions, hamstring curls, seated calf raises). That was mostly just to finish up the leg rehab going into tomorrow's 16 miler. I finished things off with a set of four upper body exercises, using Marty's tip of going from big groups (bench press or seated rows) to smaller muscle groups (tricep pushdowns or bicep curls). I also did the exercises much slower today, and that made them a lot more intense. Who knew? So, I was feeling pretty good about my day until I went out to the parking lot.

I bopped up to my Tahoe, clicked the locks, and noticed a Handi-Wipes container on my floorboard. I thought that was a little weird, and in sort of the same moment, I saw that the center console was wide open, my checkbook was gone from the cubby hole in the dash, and there was a copious amount of car passenger window glass covering the floor and passenger seat. Yep, my car got busted into in the parking lot at Gold's. Broad daylight. Between 1:20 and 2:00pm (when someone reported it who was coming through the parking lot to work out). Well, S#$@! I uttered a handful of colorful descriptions of the jerks who committed this offense against me and my property, tossed my workout bag into the back seat, locked the car (that was actually funny to me....later), and stomped back inside to report the incident. Nothing else had been taken, so I could fix all the problems, but it still honked me off.

I filled out the form that Gold's had (so that they could get their closed circuit camera evidence, if any, to the police), and started calling people. First, car insurance, and got the claim started. Next, to Mary Anne to get the name of our bank contact. She didn't have it, but Sarah found the little refrigerator magnet with the business card on it, and I stopped payment on the checks that were in the book (just four checks, but still...). Next, conversation with the property crimes policeman who interviewed me via phone and gave me a case number. Next, back to the insurance company with the police information. Then, it was time to wait on CSI: Austin. Marty waited around to see if he could do anything for me, which was really nice. Thanks, Marty! I told him he just needed to be at the run on Saturday.

Time passed. I got hooked up with the automotive glass people and made an appointment for Monday morning (that's as early as I could get in), found out that this would be on me, since the cost of the window is far less than our deductible, and went to get a snack. CSI showed up an hour or so later, and I amused myself by chatting with her while she searched for fingerprints (she found two). She said that the two questions that she gets all the time are: (1) Does that fingerprint dust come off my car? (yes), and (2) Where's your Hummer? (only on TV, kids, only on TV).

So, except for really making me angry at the hoodlums that decided to perpetrate this crime, the tale will have a reasonably happy ending. I had some library cards and some store cards (those cards that give you "points" when you swipe them in) in the checkbook, along with a couple of checks that I was going to deposit (birthday and anniversary gift checks). According to my banker, it should be almost impossible for someone to cash those checks, since they'd have to have ID showing they were me, but still...

The moral of this tale? Don't leave anything of value in your vehicle at the gym or at the lake or any site where you leave your vehicle behind while you run/hike/bike/exercise. Lesson learned. Along with the knowledge that all of us are but one thin layer of window glass from having our personal pace and property invaded and violated.

Thursday, and the Running is Easy

2007-06-28T22:25:00.000-05:00

Another Thursday, another recovery HR run. It was especially fun to go out tonight because Garmin delivered a new watch to my doorstep this afternoon. Start to finish, it was one week for them to receive my non-functioning watch and to replace it with a new one. I give them big kudos for customer service, once they accepted that it was dead. Under warranty, so it was free as well. So, after getting it all set up with the running log software and setting all the display screens to my preferences, I headed out tonight at dusk for a nice run. The weather seemed cooler and maybe a touch less humid, and I felt really great out there. Legs good, breathing easy, HR nice and low. Recipe for success. I scored a shade over 6 miles, 57 minutes and change, 9:28/mile average pace, and HR a new record for low average for these runs. All in all, I was happy with the workout.

Instead of going to the gym today, I experimented and did the long core workout that my massage guy, Ron Perry, has filmed for DVD. It's a tough little workout, especially when you're sort of trying to figure out exactly what's supposed to be done on each exercise as you're going. I was glad to get a bunch of new ideas for core exercise, and I'll use some of them at the gym the next time I go. This workout is a good standalone effort, too, for days that I don't go to the gym (or as a substitute for the core portion of the gym workouts). Thumbs up, Ron!

Tomorrow, it's a gym/cycle day, and then Saturday, we'll be doing 16 miles or so somewhere in the city limits of Austin. The major rainstorms up and down the lake system that feeds into Town Lake have caused havoc with the water levels along the trail, and our planned route for Saturday is definitely not going to be available. We'll see what happens.

And the Gym...

2007-06-27T16:49:00.001-05:00

I visited Gold's around lunchtime, and was rewarded with much better people-watching than yesterday. I truly don't understand how some people can wear short or pants so low in a workout setting. I understand WHY, but not HOW. Do they use double-stick tape to hold the pants/shorts on so there's no wardrobe malfunction? Call me puzzled. :-)

Anyway, I had a good workout again. Good core workout with Roman Chair and floor exercises, although I'm thinking it might be time to experiment with 3 sets of everything at least once a week. I'll ponder that. The upper body stuff went very well in spots (bicep curls, lat pulldowns, incline press), but I was a little off on others (bench press, tricep pulldowns). C'est la vie.

It's all for the greater good, or at least for the better functioning of the running machine, so as always, I can ignore the fluctuations on a daily basis as long as the trendline over a longer time frame is upwards. Ooooh, math and statistics! Such a geek.

Thursday is EZ HR running again and a core/leg weights gym visit. We'll be around 16 miles for the long run on Saturday, but the route is much flatter than the last couple of runs, so it should be a pretty reasonable outing.

Two Laps at a Time

2007-06-27T10:13:00.001-05:00

Wednesday's fun with Gazelles was 800m repeats. Weather was the now-usual high humidity, drizzle, rain, drizzle, humidity arc that we've grown to know and love over the last few weeks. The warmup was pleasant, though, and for a change, we could easily get through the low water crossing near Austin High. I guess the water levels have dropped over the last few days in Town Lake?

Drills and then the 50/50/50... strider lap and we were ready to go. Gilbert divided us up into big bunches, and my group was sent out to start at about 3:40/800m. We were to do between 6 and 8 repeats. I led the first repeat, and we nailed the pace. It was gratifying to get back to that level of pacing after struggling a little last week. I drifted back into the pack for numbers 2 and 3, but we nailed those repeats as well. On number 4, I was back up front, and went too fast on the first lap, but managed to dial it back enough that we finished more or less on time. I'm pretty sure it was repeat number 4 that had the heaviest rainfall. I did a better job on number 5. After that, Gilbert told us to stop at 6, and to "drop the bomb" a little on the last repeat. So, Brian took off with Amy, and I trailed along behind them. I almost caught Amy at the very end of the repeat, but I was pleased with my time nonetheless. It was a pretty good set of repeats, and a very consistent set on time.

Stats: 3:39, 3:39, 3:38, 3:38, 3:39, 3:19. Overall average about 3:35, or 7:13/mile. Most of the repeats were at 7:20/mile pace, though.

After the repeats, we were supposed to go over and do 10 pullups. Sadly, I still can't do that many. I'm getting better, and I actually did 4 in a row before giving out this time. Still, that's not great. I did another couple of pullups in another "set," but I was done after 6 total. At least I have something else to shoot for, right? :-)

Colleen and I ran back after that, and had a nice talk. Amazingly, the low water crossing was flooded out by the time we headed back. I guess they've opened up the floodgates upstream again. It's sort of scary how fast water finds a new level when it's unleashed from its barriers. A good stretching session with Colleen, Rachel and Lisa followed that as we recovered from the morning exertions. Another beautiful day with the Gazelles! For the day, about 6.8 total miles. This week looks like it will tip over 40 miles again before dropping a little bit next week. We'll see.

EZ Runnin', Gym and Yardwork

2007-06-26T21:59:00.000-05:00

Sounds exciting, huh? Such is a day here at Casa Clement. I eased over to Gold's in the morning for core and leg weights, and that went pretty well. I think most of the mirror-watchers come to the gym later in the day (noon and afternoon), so the people-watching wasn't as good as usual. Sigh...

Time passed, errands were run, and then the intermittent rains eased back enough to leave merely jungle-level humidity and heat for mowing. So, I got out there and did additional heat training and crosstraining pushing the mower around the yard. The steady rains that we've had this summer have caused the grass to grow much heavier and quicker than in past years, which is great for aesthetics, but lousy for the mower guy (me). I managed to get through all that while enjoying a podcast on the iPod, and then commenced rehydrating upon returning to the cool of the house.

Hours passed, and at 8:00pm, I headed out for the EZ HR run in the 'Hood. I bumped up the time and distance a little bit more as I ease up to the full 7 miler. Tonight, I scored 56:54 and just over 6 miles. Average pace was 9:28/mile. My HR was a little higher than I'd like, probably due to all the other activity that preceded the run, but the pace felt nice and easy, so mission accomplished. A little stretching, and my workout day was done. Now, I just have to get enough food and fluids so that I'm ready to go for tomorrow's 800's.

Up, Up and Away (W-W-W-W-Wilke!)

2007-06-25T15:18:00.000-05:00

Today was the first Wilke workout of the marathon training season. This is often a milestone, especially for those who are experiencing Wilke for the first time. Gilbert gave some folks the option of doing the shorter warmup version (starting and finishing at the park at Barton Springs), but for veterans he suggested the longer version (start and finish at RunTex). Let the record show that I tried to gin up a good excuse this morning for missing Wilke, and I really did feel a bit out of sorts upon awakening, but couldn't justify skipping...sadly. :-) I was pretty much the last guy on warmups, but that was okay with me. I took my time getting over to Wilke, just to make sure that I gently brought the running machinery up to operating temperatures.

The long-form runners got to skip the drills, so we quickly got the workout details (minimum of 3 x Wilke, max of 7 x Wilke...with a suggestion that marathoners all do 7, then 3 backwards and 3 short uphill striders), and we were sent off. There was a mist in the air that made the asphalt slippery in spots (and later it rained on us for one or two repeats for the full basket of fun), but it was time to go in spite of that.

I just picked a spot about halfway through the pack, and held that spot or moved up a bit in the order as the workout went along. I've more or less learned how to negotiate Wilke after years of trying it, and for me, I just pick a good hill-climbing gear, focus on form as much as possible, and get on up the hill. Gilbert told us this time to start a little further back than usual, and we were to finish quite a ways further up the hill than usual (it was pretty flat for the extra distance both at the top and bottom, but still longer).

I met Courtney today as she introduced herself on one of the downhill recovery jogs, and that was pretty fun, just as a change of pace during the repetitive nature of this event. I joined up with Brian and Brad for repeat number 5, which felt to me like it was going to be my last one. I had made a internal deal with myself at the start to aim for 5 repeats with an option on all 7, depending on how I felt. When I got to 5, and by the time we reached the finish, I was done. I made some Wilke noises on the last couple of repeats, but I held up pretty well, I think. The three backwards Wilkes went really well, with no walking steps, and as usual, that part of the workout makes your quads absolutely turn to deadened putty. It's sort of cool that your quads feel like that, because you know you've really been working, but you also can't wait until you figure out a way to somehow make that feeling go away so you can run home. :-) The cure? Well, our coach has figured that out, too. We finished up with 3 shorter uphill striders, and despite the fact that it seems so contrary to sensibility, your legs really do feel better afterwards. Go figure.

After quite a few cups of replenishment fluids, I fell in with Chris(?), Brad and Brian for the jog back to RunTex. It's amazing, but since we were running back pretty casually, my legs felt better and better as we went along. We all chatted away, and it was a pretty enjoyable journey. The stats for the day are something like 7.8 miles total, and my HR on warmup/cooldown was really in the pocket. For a change.

I got in a full stretching session, which I needed, and I got a chance to hang out with Lisa C. for a while, too. Another Wilke workout in the books, and although I sort of disappointed Gilbert by "only" doing 5xWilkes, I'll call this one a success. Tomorrow is EZ running in the 'Hood and a gym workout. One day at a time. Just one by one...

Mountain Bonnell

2007-06-23T11:22:00.001-05:00

This morning was fairly cool for this time of year, maybe 72 degrees, but humid as always. Whatever the conditions, though, it was time for the first Mountain Bonnell run in quite a while. I've either wimped out or begged off of the scattered times during the spring that Bonnell was an "option" on a Scenic run day, mainly because I was nursing a quirky hip flexor. Not much of an excuse, but at the time it made sense to me to be careful. But, today, there was no excuse and I was sort of looking forward to the Assault on Bonnell that would happen during the 7th mile of the run.

Gilbert again stressed that we should be at conversational pace until the "fast finish" from O. Henry water stop. I have no problem with those instructions. And off we went. The faster folks filtered through during the first half mile, and we were mostly settled in by mile one. There was a pack of mostly guys trailing a pack of mostly gals as we all sort of found our pace together, and by the time we reached Lake Austin Blvd., we had formed up a large pack of 12 people or so. Pretty much the same folks as last week's Barton Skyway adventure in the rain, with some new folks. There were several people who I still haven't met (note to self: introduce yourself!), and the rest of the bunch were Brian, Marty, Larry, Leslie, Lisa C., Venus, Renee, and Monique, among others. I settled in about midpack and tried to let others set the early pace, and soon found Gilbert with the first water/Accelerade stop. After a pretty efficient stop there, we were off to the hills. Early pace was about 9:20/mile overall, with a nice slow first mile and then a gentle acceleration over those next couple of miles. So far, so good. I was feeling pretty snappy.

In the hills, I tried to follow folks instead of driving the pace, and that worked out well. There was a surprise extra water stop on Scenic, which we took advantage of, and then we were off again, for the tougher hills ahead and then Mt. Bonnell. All systems were still "Go," and I continued to follow for the most part. It always seems to me that those first couple of hills around Scenic are tougher just because your body is having to reset itself for that type of running. By the time we get to Pecos and beyond, you're sort of in "hill mode," and it all seems to flow a bit easier by then. Anyway, we turned as a large pack onto 35th, then Bonnell Rd., and everyone got just a little quieter as they looked inward for their hill-climbing mantra. As we hit the bottom of Mt. Bonnell, the pack immediately scattered like a Tour d'France mountain climb. Everyone has a different gear for such a steep and long hill, and we all settled into the effort to come. Larry bounced up the hill like it was nothing, and I paired up with Brian as we drove ourselves up the slopes. We caught one of the new folks right near the top of the second rise of the hill, and it was big relief to get to the flat area on top! Except for dodging a stream of much heavier automobile traffic coming down the hill towards us, it was just another Bonnell climb. But, it's always sort of a badge of honor to get on up.

We got a nice long water/Gatorade/GU break at the top, regrouped, and headed into the second half of the journey. In that post-Bonnell euphoria, we sort of glided along for a while. We went over and touched the stop sign at Balcones Woods, and per Gilbert's instructions, we then turned around, came back up to the top, and then went down Bonnell the same way we had ascended. That way is a longer trip, and it's a steeper descent, but it wasn't bad. It's been quite a while since I've come down via Mt. Bonnell Road, after all.

Larry kept me motivated to push up the hill on 35th, and then Brian, Larry and I settled in for the cruise down Exposition. It was nice for a change to have someone else drive the pace machine, and I sort of drifted along those couple of long hills on the way to O. Henry and the final water stop. We chatted away about subjects hither and yon, and it was fun to get to know a little about Larry while we cruised down the street. Sooner than you think, it's time for the O. Henry water stop. We had picked up the pace coming back, but nothing terribly fast just yet. Lisa C. caught up with us at the water stop, and after we had tanked up again (I drank at least 3 cups at each water stop, and 4 at most) including my second and last GU, it was time for whatever flavor of "fast finish" that we could muster.

I wasn't optimistic about how I'd do coming in, but as always figured I'd run how I felt and let the times be what they would be. You usually want at least MGP for the fast finish, and preferably, as Larry suggested, faster than your anticipated MGP, so that you can consider running faster at your marathon than you currently believe. Okey dokey. So, off we went. I told Larry he should go on ahead and run how he felt and let us find our own pace for those last 3 miles, and after some discussion, he took off. I found my legs about a half mile down the road, and was soon running alone, but I could hear Lisa and Brian behind me, I thought, so I kept moving along. Once I hit the trail, it was good to be able to count down the mile markers, just like it was a tempo race. That always helps me endure the last bits of the long runs, especially when we're supposed to be accelerating. I passed a few folks who weren't Gazelles, but with around 1.25 miles to go, I knew there were footsteps that had been dogging my heels for a while, and it had to be someone I knew. I resisted the urge to look back, however, figuring I'd just keep focused forward and see how it played. On the footbridge with a mile to go, though, I couldn't stand it, and peeked back to see Lisa C. cruising along just a few steps behind! She said something like "You caught me," and I just buckled down for the last mile. I kept hearing those footsteps until about a half mile to go, when I must have gotten a little extra distance between us. I wasn't sure if I was still getting faster, but I was pretty sure I wasn't slowing down too much.

Anyway, once you get to Auditorium Shores it's mentally downhill from there. I know I had that serious eye squint going on as I tried to hold my form and pace to the end. I passed a bunch of the faster Gazelles coming towards me as they did their striders, and several of them had encouraging words which helped in those last yards. I was really happy to see the finish, and the long day's work was done.

I chugged a bunch of water at the coolers, and then enjoyed the outdoor shower to pour cool water over my head to try to start my body cooling down. That's a wonderful feeling! I fussed about the first strider or two, but as usual, I felt much smoother and loose once I had done 4 of them. Once again, Larry pushed me enough to make me run them faster, which was the right thing to do. Thanks, Larry!

We found a nice shaded spot for stretching, and a large herd of Gazelles gathered to enjoy the post-run times together. Good stretching session, I thought, and we even had watermelon cut up for us to enjoy once we were done! Excellent.

The stats for the run were 14.2 miles total, 8:50/mile running pace (a little quick, maybe, but my HR numbers were in the long run range), 9:22/mile pace overall with water stop time included. The 3.2 mile fast finish averaged 8:17/mile, which is perfectly fine with me. I've done faster in the past, but this was okay, a good bit faster than MGP. Once again, I lost 4 pounds during the run, even after fairly aggressive hydration during the run and after. It's just startling to see that much of a drop, but it's easy to fix. Hello, water bottle!

For the week, I hit 40 miles running, which is a big jump over the last weeks. However, that's mostly due to 4 miles on the long run and adding the second recovery run. The Monday workout was longer miles than the circuit workout from the week before, too. It's all coming together, and I'm feeling better and better about how things are going. This next week, the mileage increase should be much more modest.

Four In A Row

2007-06-21T21:19:00.000-05:00

For the first time in quite a while, I ran for the fourth day in a row tonight. Not a big deal, you say? Maybe not. But, I've come up with excuses not to run that extra day so far this marathon training season, and I failed to find a way to skip it tonight. Those 2 recovery runs each week are important in having some easy miles for both musculo-skeletal and cardiac reasons, and I know this. But, it's easy to not do everything we're supposed to do, too. :-)

For the last three weeks, I've slowly reintegrated the full number of gym visits back into my weekly routine, and equally slowly, I've added first one, then two recovery runs as well. For now, I'm just running for a number of minutes without regard to distance on those runs, which works easiest for me in the 'Hood. I figure by the first week in July, I'll be up to the regulation 7 mile recovery distance, and I can start meeting my friends down at Town Lake for those very entertaining easy runs, full of conversation. For the time being, I'm adding a few minutes a week to the runs.

Tonight, I scored 5.6 miles, just over 52 minutes, a relaxed 9:17/mile pace. HR info was solidly in the happy recovery zone, and it seemed cooler out there this evening. Summer solstice and all, it was maybe 5-10 degrees cooler due to the wave of rain events that we've enjoyed these last couple of days. I'm looking forward to a day off of running tomorrow (but a gym visit, of course), and then it's Mountain Bonnell for the first time in a while.

So far, this has been a very good workout week, and I can tell that I'm starting to climb back into shape. I'm being patient about all of that, but as long as I continue to do all the right things, the running will come back to me.

Gym Visitation

2007-06-21T15:32:00.000-05:00

I flaked out yesterday after the 1000's, and didn't go to the gym for core/upper body workout. I did, however, do a complete core workout here at home, using the exercise ball and, uh, the floor. No arms except pushups, but that won't kill me.

Today I got over to Gold's, though, and sailed through a core/leg weights day. I added reps to the floor exercises and back raises, and added 5 seconds to each of the plank exercises, so there's progress there. On the leg weights, I did everything, and even added back in the "Butt Blaster" machine that Gilbert likes us to use. I bumped up the weight on hamstring curls, quad extensions and both kinds of calf raises, too. It was a solid workout.

There was quite a bit less mirror-watching from the assembled masses today, for some reason. The iPod chose a lot of Springsteen, the Beatles and Chicago today for my listening pleasure. Chicago II was the first album I ever bought, back in 1971 or 1972. The double LP cost me something around $6, as I recall. I've still got it. They were my first "favorite group," and I still enjoy their music to this day. I sure do miss vinyl LP's. It was always so cool to look at all the cover artwork, the liner notes, and the song lyrics...certainly it was better than on CD, where you have to break out the magnifying glass (or your eyeglasses) to read all the info. Naturally, it's easier to take care of CDs, but when you'd drop an LP on the turntable for the first time, and the needle touched down at the outer groove with a soft "tick," it was a special moment. At least it was for me. :-)

Two and a Half Laps at a Time

2007-06-20T10:47:00.001-05:00

Today we got to have fun with track running, 5 x 1000m at Austin High School. It was pretty tough conditions today, really warm (80 degrees) and steamy (the rain came as I left RunTex), so the workout was a little tougher than it would have been otherwise. We had a good crew that chattered comfortably as we trundled over to the track, and except for having to do some cross-country work to avoid the overflow from the lake (they're running lots of water through all the dams, trying to release gradually all the recent rainwater), it was a pleasant run.

Drills and then the 50/50/50/50... deal, and it was time to go. Rogue was there doing some sort of circuit workout, so the track was pretty crowded. The group to which I was assigned by G was large in number, but we'd string out fairly soon. He wanted us to aim for 4:20-4:30 per 1000m, which he said would be "easy." Um, not so much. I came into the workout thinking 4:30-4:40 per 1000m would be about right. At any rate, off we went, and after a really slow first lap (my fault), I managed to dial it back down so that we finished the first 1000 close to the 4:30 target. 200m of walk/jog, and then Number Two. That one was better paced, but the overall time was about the same as the first. The third was about the same time as well, but when I finished, there were only two other folks with me at the end. The rest of the group had paired up and matched up in smaller pods behind us. That made perfect sense to me. When I got ready to start the fourth repeat, no one else was ready to go, so I just took off on my own. That turned out to be my fastest repeat of the day. I asked Gilbert whether I should do 5 or 6 repeats as I got back to the starting line, and of course he said "For you, six." Okey dokey. Accordingly, I held back just a bit on that fifth repeat, knowing I had to do six. Time was still pretty good, or at least it was consistent. By the time I finished, though, G had changed his mind, and stopped most of us after 5 repeats. I knocked out 3 x 200m striders, and I thought I did pretty well with those. Gilbert did yell across the track on the third one for me to "Butt Kick!," and I tried to respond. After that, I was done.

The times: 4:34, 4:35, 4:33, 4:28, 4:32. Average repeat was 4:32, 7:18/mile pace. I'm slower than I was at this time last year. But, I'll get that back by the end of Chicago training. These paces are about right for a 3:35-3:45 marathon goal, though, according to most sources.

I ran back to RunTex with Vasil and Frank, and had a good time chatting away. I was drenched upon completion, of course, and when I went over to stretch, I think I was actually a little light-headed. I had to rest a bit just to get enough energy to stretch. It was fun to chat with Laura and Colleen, who are leaving Austin for varying amounts of time this weekend.

When I got home, I checked my weight out of curiosity, and I was still down 3 pounds from my morning weight. That's after all the cups of water and Accelerade during the workout and the 12 ounces of Endurox, and even some more Gatorade consumed on the ride to RunTex and then back home. Three pounds in a single speedwork session. Dang. Anyway, it was a good workout, despite my slightly slower times compared to last year. I scored some 7.8 miles total. This will be a bigger mileage week for me, well over 30 miles, so that's cool to bump up over that numerical barrier. Hopefully, I'll get to the gym later on today after I replenish some fluids and mail off the Garmin to RepairWorld.

Watch Repair and EZ Runnin'

2007-06-19T19:23:00.000-05:00

In a burst of technological wizardry, I managed to take apart my old Polar HR watch and replace the battery. I eventually got it back together again, and it might even be watertight. We'll see. I will admit that it took three different tries of screwing down the backplate on the watch and reopening it to get all the buttons lined up and ready to rock. I accomplished all of this without using too many "special purpose" words, which was a major victory. While doing all this, I discovered that the little set of tiny screwdrivers that I've had for a while are pretty substandard metal. They all stripped out their tips while I wrestled with the repeated closures of the watch, and that caused some significant angst. Once I switched to my eyeglasses repair kit, though, I found a screwdriver made of stout enough material to accomplish the job, and that made me happier. I took a few minutes to make sure I knew how to do elementary stuff like starting and stopping a run and taking a lap split, and then I was ready to go. Such are the excitements of a day here at Casa Clement. Note to Self: Procure a set of higher-quality micro-screwdrivers. :-)

Garmin finally responded, by the way, and it looks like they are treating my watch repair as a warranty issue, so I'll be sending the 305 to Kansas tomorrow to be rehabbed. Hopefully, it will get back before I leave for a beach vacation in a little less than 3 weeks.

After all that, it was a relief to simply lace up the shoes (clean and dry after the rainy run on Saturday) and head out into the 'Hood for some EZ HR running. I was shooting for 40-50 minutes today, as I slowly ramp up the mileage on my solo running. Once again, the idea was to keep my HR fairly low. I ended up doing just fine. It was weird wearing two watches (harkens back to those days before the 305 Garmin), but it was no big deal. I scored 5.2 miles, 50 minutes, more or less, 9:35/mile. It was a good little run and served the purpose.

Some good tunes today between the gym and tonight's run on the iPod. The coolest thing was that tonight on the easy run, the iPod kicked things off with James Brown ("Please, Please, Please"), and finished up with Little Richard ("Good Golly, Miss Molly"). It just doesn't get any better than that! In between, Frank Zappa(!), Chicago, Creedence, Cream, and even Harry Nilsson ("Me and My Arrow"), among many others. Music is my favorite drug, that's for sure.

Oh, yeah, I fired up the Father's Day waffle iron and used the fancy chocolate chip waffle mix that they gave me with it to whip up some evening sustenance for my kids. They gave it all a big "thumbs up," so that's pretty cool. I'm more of a regular waffle guy, but I must admit that the fancy ones were pretty tasty. Next time, I'll make up the batter from scratch (for which I'll get to use the digital kitchen scale that I also received on Sunday), and I'll report the results of that experiment as they occur. I'm thinking blueberry for me, maybe one plain and one blueberry...we'll see. So many choices in this life.

Vogueing at Gold's (Strike a Pose!)

2007-06-19T15:32:00.000-05:00

This morning, I made my Tuesday visit to Gold's for Core and Leg workouts. I noticed a larger than normal preponderance of folks who just couldn't take their eyes off of themselves in the collected mirrors there. I'd just as soon not check myself out while pushing bits of iron around. But there were a bunch of people who really were captivated by their own images. Guess that's why most of the walls are covered in mirrors, huh? :-)

Anyway, I got in 10 minutes of easy cycling to warmup, and then did most of the regular stretching routine to work out any residual junk from yesterday's Secret Hill workout. Legs felt great, for the record. Core stuff went well, even the hated Roman Chair exercises. The leg weights went perfectly well, pushing the muscles around (including a lot of those muscles that are only small contributors to the running motion) for some strength-building while working out residue from previous running efforts. I'm not trying to do any max weight sets for the legs, so doing sets of 15 reps really does more to rehab my legs than tire them out. As much as I like to complain about the gym, it really does help.

I noticed on the Gold's Video channel that Ashlee Simpson has had major plastic surgery in the last year or so, and has that wonderfully natural white blonde hair, as well. I had the iPod on, so fortunately I could not hear her sing...I presume that her voice is much the same as it ever was. Speaking of the iPod, it delivered an excellent mix of tunes this morning, including a new Asylum Street Spankers' song called "Whatever" that I need to learn. It's funny.

Oh, I found my old Garmin 201, and after a year just sitting there, unused, I turned it on today, and it has a full charge! While the 305 is getting repaired/replaced, at least I'll have a modestly accurate accounting of my running mileage. Gosh, I might just put a new battery in my old Polar HR watch while I'm at it, and go back to the two watch scenario for long runs. Technology slave. :-)

The Fool(s) On The Hill

2007-06-18T15:51:00.000-05:00

Happy Birthday, Sir Paul! Mr. McCartney is 65 today. Hard to believe, isn't it? I am an unapologetic Beatles fan, and I have long celebrated Paul and John's birthdays by playing Beatles tunes on my various entertainment platforms on those days. While we may not have been "fools" this morning for running the Secret Hill workout, we were indeed on the Hill, so that Beatles tune is most appropriate today. Now, I've got to go and select a new Beatles tune to commit to memory on guitar and voice. Maybe "I've Just Seen A Face."

With apologies to Jan's work with "The Secret" DVD/Multi-platform inspirational/motivational megalith, I finally learned about the Secret...Hill workout this morning. I had either ducked it or missed it the few times it's happened this spring, and as a rule, one is not allowed to know of the specific location of said Secret Hill until and unless you participate in said workout.

My Garmin is officially toast (sigh...), so I ran with "just" a watch this morning. A goodly number of fall marathoners and others took off on time from RunTex for the hilly adventures ahead. Weather was as usual. But, I might becoming accustomed to the heat a little bit. 79 degrees didn't feel as bad today as it did a week ago. Maybe I was just sleepy, instead. :-) We cruised gently over to the parking lots off of Robert E. Lee and did our drills and strides, and Gilbert met us at that point and sent us further on up the road. Since I had no firm idea where we were headed, I trailed along midpack, and was kicked around a little bit by the long hill that climbs up from Rbt. E. Lee to the Secret Street. It was yet another occasion that the newbie might say, "Wow! Great hill workout!" essentially before the workout officially began. I know that's how I was after my first Wilke workout 3 years ago. :-)

Gilbert had parked at the end of the shallower portion of the long hill climb, but before the slight turn onto the steeper climb that finishes the repetition. We grabbed a cup of water/Accelerade, and then G asked us to knock out 4 repeats, no timing involved, with a concentration on form (lifting the knees, strong push off, drive the arms, etc.). After the 4 full repeats, there would be more fun stuff to follow. Okey dokey.

We all jogged down to the start of the repeat, and we were off. I hung out in the middle of the pack, but usually closed on whoever had started ahead of me, so I was happy with my performance. This workout is similar in design to Wilke, with an eye to building leg strength, but the road is kinder for longer. It's a longer hill, nearly twice as long, but I sort of enjoyed the work this morning. The fact that it slants off sort of slaunchwise keeps you from seeing the whole path at once, and that helps you to compartmentalize the repetitions into manageable bite-sized chunks. Sooner than I expected, I was done with my 4 repeats, and launched into the extra stuff. Even though it wasn't about time today, I was happy to note that I actually slightly improved my time up each repeat throughout the morning. I made some "Wilke noises" at the end of number 4, but I did not slow down. Victory!

As at Wilke, we did 3 repeats running backwards up the steeper final bit of the course, with the first backwards running going the full distance (about 50-100 yards, I estimate), and then 2 final backwards running repeats going just up to halfway (which was most of the really steep part of the course). That backwards running absolutely burns your quads! We finished off with 3 shorter uphill striders, which actually helped my legs to rejuvenate a bit. G tortured a few folks by making them run up the hill while he held them back with a harness and elastic band device. I'm thankful that I was not chosen for such special treatment. Rich and Frank had that fun, though, and did good jobs of running against serious resistance.

Some more fluids later, and it was time to head back. I paired up with Amy, and we had a nice chat on the way back, at a reasonable cooldown pace. It was around 2.2 miles each way for warmup/cooldown. My legs felt pretty burnt on the way back, especially my quads, but that's the way they're supposed to feel, so I'll score this as a successful outing.

Endurox and full stretching later, my day was done. I'll guess that we covered around 7.4 miles total today (Frank had a slightly higher number, but I usually just give myself a standard 800 meters for all the drills, and that, along with not counting the weird distance that accumulates while at the water cooler, accounts for most of the difference). Tomorrow is a recovery run, 40-50 minutes, nice and easy, and a gym visit (core/legs). Wednesday is apparently 1000's on the track, which are entirely different than doing them on the Zilker road course. Should be a party!

Happy Father's Day/Birthday

2007-06-17T20:09:00.001-05:00

This year is one of those years where Father's Day and my birthday coincide. While my family takes pains to celebrate both occasions, it's still sort of a drag when I get cheated out of one of my big days. :-) At any rate, I'm another year older, along with those two kids who earned me the "father" designation. As always, happy birthday to Barry Manilow and Venus Williams, with whom I share this natal anniversary.

The only downside to this happy day was that it seems that the water that invaded the Garmin has apparently killed it. It will not turn on, and apparently, the battery inside immediately discharges once it's off the charger. I hope that some sort of warranty provision or credit card warranty or guarantee will provide coverage to replace the unit. It worked fabulously well for a year, but almost exactly at the end of that year, it has sprung a leak and died. Boo hoo. I'll have to rely on others for my GPS data now, at least until I get mine fixed/replaced. Gadgets...

Barton Hills Road [Entered 6/17/07]

2007-06-16T19:45:00.000-05:00

Saturday, we met, in the rain, for a shorter, but hillier run. We started down at Porter Middle School (now the Ann Richards Academy for girls), and laughed a lot about how it seems that we have rain every time we do this route. It is true that last year, at exactly this same weekend, it rained on us pretty hard starting about halfway through the run.

Anyway, we got ourselves organized, and off we went. I ran with a fairly cohesive pack of maybe 10 folks for most of the day. I just tagged along, chatting with folks, until we got to the first water stop at about mile 3. It was there that I noticed that the formerly bulletproof Garmin 305 had somehow taken on water inside the faceplate. Could this be related to the progressively quieter alert beepers? A perforated speaker cone, perhaps? At any rate, the watch seemed to be working just fine, so I continued on. Our pace was nice and relaxed, in the 9:20-9:30/mile range for most of the run. My HR was in a good range, as well, for the first time in a long while on a long run.

The crew today? Renee, Leslie, Lisa, Marty, Brad, Jan, Brian, Collin, a new girl who I didn't meet, and probably someone else who I'm forgetting now. Brad took off by the first water stop, feeling good, so we didn't get to spend a lot of time running with him this morning.

We were having a lot of fun today, which seems to happen every time the rain comes. Goofiness ensues. We discussed a few vocabulary words ("anathema" and "penultimate") among many other topics. Who knows where this stuff comes from? After 6 miles or so of level to gently downhill running, we hit the streets leading to Wilke for the hilly finish to the run. I was feeling pretty good at that point, and started moving up in the pack a bit. After tanking up with Accelerade and water at the corner of Barton Skyway and Barton Hills Rd., it was time to tackle the "Lollipop" circle at the top of Barton Hills Rd. I always remember this as being tougher than it is, but even without the haze filter of memory, it does have a couple of testing hill climbs. I picked it up a little more in that portion of the trip.

At the water stop for the last time, I saw Alex and Ty briefly, who had apparently gone and done a couple of Wilke repeats just for fun in the middle of the run. Now that's a bit goofy! :-) One more helping of water, and I took off for the finish. I ran alone up Barton Skyway and then was happy to see that the road flattened out one hill before I thought it did (I think 3 hills, and there are really only two hills, but tough ones). A turn onto Lamar, and soon enough, I had found my way back to the finish. The rain had stopped by now, and it was actually pretty cool out for a change this late in the year.

We knocked out striders on the track, and then had a fun stretching session. It was a good running day. To add to the fun, Brian, Frank, Alex, Jan and Brad joined me at Kerbey Lane for a birthday breakfast! I had my first mimosa (who knew they were this good!), and we all were overserved with plates of breakfast delights. Nice! It's little things like that breakfast that remind me how lucky I am to have found the Gazelles, particularly those terrific friends. The running and training is almost secondary to the relationships with those folks who I've come to know so well. We traded lots of funny stories, which shall go unrecorded in these pages. A splendid time was had by all.

The stats, by the way: 10.35 miles, average running pace 9:13/mile (those last 3 miles were in the 8:10-8:40/mile range), and with water stop time, it drifted to 9:52/mile overall. 6 striders. Just right at 28 miles this week, too, since I skipped that one recovery run. Still, I scored a complete set of gym visits, and hit the bike on Friday. Another good week. Monday I get to do the Secret Hill workout, which I'm excited about. After all, you are not allowed to know where the Secret Hill is until you participate in that workout. Cool!

Thursday/Friday GymStuff [Entered 6/17]

2007-06-15T19:39:00.000-05:00

Thursday and Friday, I visited Gold's to complete my gymtastic chores for the exercise week. While I failed to do the recovery run scheduled for Thursday, I figure I'll get over that. Good workouts both days, and I'm already starting to be able to increase reps and/or weights on several of the exercises. Planks and the Roman Chair stuff on the core workout are getting easier, too.

On Friday, I also did 25 minutes of cycling at a solid HR, so I wasn't totally a cardio wastrel at the end of the week. This all leads to Saturday's adventure up and around Barton Hills Road, but that's another blog entry, isn't it?

I saw Marty at the gym on Thursday, which was pretty cool. Always good to see a fellow Gazelle outside our running adventures.

Zilker 1000's and Gym [Entered 6/14/07]

2007-06-13T20:19:00.000-05:00

Wednesday was the usual weather situation, and a goodly number of folks joined up at RunTex for Zilker 1000's. Gilbert is slowly increasing the length of the interval distances these first weeks of Chicago training, and today was, to me, the easier version of 1000m repeats. They seem easier on the road course at Zilker than on the track. Still, you've got to focus to keep the pace right.

Very reasonable warmup over to Zilker was followed by drills, and we were ready to roll. I'm still trying to figure out just what group Gilbert has assigned me to (is it "B" or "C?"), but for now, I'm just finding the familiar pace pals and going off with them. He called for a minimum of 5x1000m, but he hoped that we'd have time to get in 6. He also said that he wasn't looking for us to be "huffing and puffing" at the end of each repeat, but just wanted us to be consistent. Of course, he then said he wanted our times. Funny.

Anyway, I took off with a large crowd, but by the time we finished that one and jogged/walked across the grass back to the start of the course, everyone had strung out into much smaller clumps of pacers. I was running around Amy, and we were sort of a pod of two. Times bounced around a bit, but were pretty close. Gilbert told us to finish up with number 5, due to time constraints, and suggested that we go faster on the last one. Okey dokey. I was able to pick it up quite a bit for number 5, which made me feel pretty good.

I was happy with my results today. My HR numbers showed that I wasn't redlining it, and my last repeat was the only one where my HR climbed into the 90% neighborhood. The splits were 4:33, 4:29, 4:36, 4:30, and 4:12. Average lap was 4:28, or 7:12/mile pace. Not bad for early speedwork. My legs felt fine, and I think I'm starting to come around again.

A relaxed return to RunTex with Brian, Frank and Brad made for a fun overall day. I knocked out some stretching and chatted with Lisa for a while, and that was it for the Gazelles morning. I scored 7.3 miles total for the day.

After that, I went to the gym to make up for yesterday's miss. Some good core workout stuff (floor exercises, back raises on the rack device, and the full set of "planks"), and then the full upper body routine. The upper body stuff is coming along, but as with all of this, patience is a virtue.

It was a good exercise day. Tomorrow is 50-60 minutes of EZ HR running and the gym (core/leg weights).

EZ HR Runnin' and Yardwork

2007-06-12T22:03:00.000-05:00

Today was a bit off-kilter, but all in all a good day. I spent a good bit of time today mowing and edging, those banes of suburban existence. It has been a while since I've tackled the backyard, and it was like taking a machete to the jungle. Still, the neighbors can now breathe a sigh of relief that my yard is right in Stepford step with everyone else's. :-)

That, along with some other errands, chewed up my available time, so I didn't get to the gym today. Instead, I had the aforementioned alternate yardwork cross-training, and I did the basic core exercises here at home after my recovery run this evening. The run? A very successful HR excursion, with the average rate way down for the first time in quite a while. Maybe things are starting to click a bit. 40 minutes, 4.17 miles, average pace a relaxed 9:35/mile. The only issue that I'm having is that the Garmin's alert beeper seems to have lost its pep. I've got a request into Tech Support to find out if there's a solution. It's not a big problem except when I'm doing some sort of interval workout and need the periodic alerts to stop or start running. More as it becomes available...

The iPod delivered a wildly eclectic mix tonight, too. Even Pink Floyd made an appearance in my ears. It seems that it was mostly folk music tonight, and quieter rock. Sort of nice. At least one fun Warren Zevon tune, "A Certain Girl," which I believe is a cover. I'll check on that.

Tomorrow, we've got (I think) a longer interval fartlek workout (3:00 faster bits, and 1:00 recovery x 6-10 repetitions). Pacing will be critical, as usual. I may sneak up to the gym to do most of the workout that I missed today, too. We'll see.

Circuitry, Again

2007-06-11T10:46:00.000-05:00

Today was the second Circuit workout of the three that kick off the Marathon Mondays for Chicago training. Weather was quite a bit nicer than Saturday, but still humid. Gilbert told us to warm up easily, and we did, for a change. I felt pretty loose by the time we got to Austin High School. Drills were a little snappier than usual, because Gilbert could see us clearly in the early morning light (no more hiding in the dark like in Fall, Winter and Spring!), and he kept us on task. A quick drink of water, and it was time to get going.

I scored 3 complete circuits and about half of the fourth (400 meter runs between sets). Gilbert called us over to do the medicine ball routine then, which was tough in spots but seemingly a bit easier than in past weeks. He showed me a new exercise that he wants to incorporate, though, and it will be rugged once it gets added to the mix. Basically, you hold yourself up at an angle with your abs while seated, and you catch and toss the medicine ball from arms extended high over your head. Sounds easy, and it started out easy, but you start burning about 7 tosses into the festivities. Fun times.

The extra stuff after that included hopping (burn, baby burn those calves and quads), the 15/30/45 deal, some arch/smash, and the new and improved fast feet. I was totally drenched upon completion of all that, but it was a good kind of tired. So I will try to convince myself, at any rate. :-)

A group of us actually ran pretty easily back to RunTex, and our day was done. I got in most of the full stretching ritual while chatting with Rachel, Lisa, and Colleen.

Another good day of Gazelles, about 5 miles of total foot pounding. This may have been the last day of the old Fila Providence II's, though. Tomorrow is 40-50 minutes of EZ HR running and then a gym visit. Wednesday is either Fartleks or 1000's on the road...we'll see what's what when we show up then.

Long Running - Scenic Version

2007-06-09T16:11:00.000-05:00

The first Official Long Run for the Chicago marathon training in GazellesWorld was this morning. It was hot and humid (80 degrees and thick), so we were all a little wary of the run ahead as we gathered at RunTex. Gilbert had devised a grouping based on tempo run times, I suppose, and he sent us out in those rather large groups to do the Scenic route (roughly 11 miles of hilly terrain). Our "B" group went out, and by the second mile, about 8 folks had broken away ahead of me, and I fell in with a secondary group. We stopped briefly at Mopac for a sip of water, and headed on out from there. At that juncture, I was in No Man's Land between groups, but soon caught up with Amy. We ran together until Gilbert's Accelerade/water stop near Red Bud Trail. I was trying to keep the pace down, so I was happy to let that front group get out ahead of me. So far, so good.

Splits miles 1-3.5: 9:57, 9:09, 0.33 miles at 9:06/mile (34 second water stop), then 9:11 and 0.23 miles at 9:21/mile. 9:23/mile running pace. Gilbert's water stop 1:34.

Amy told me to go on ahead, so I was running totally alone for most of the next mile, but I slowly caught up to Lisa as we reached the start of the hilly stuff on Scenic Dr. I settled in at her pace, and we proceeded to run together pretty much the rest of the day. We had some nice conversation when we weren't huffing and puffing up the hills. We noticed that a few folks had been burned out from the early quicker pace in the subgroup ahead, and they were coming back to us a little bit. We kept our effort about the same, and it was good to see that our approach was working. We got water at the dry cleaners on 35th Street, and I took a GU, and we were off again. The hill on 35th was some steady work, and then we hit the rolling fun that is Exposition. We gathered up those folks who had faded back a little, and I was actually feeling pretty good as we reached the second official Gazelles water/Accelerade stop at O. Henry. It was really hot, but at this point, we were going to finish pretty well.

Splits miles 4-8: 9:04, 8:59, 0.48 miles at 8:53/mile, (2:31 water/GU stop), 9:17, 8:56, (water/Accelerade stop 2:32). Running pace down to 9:12/mile. That's what I was targeting, so good for me.

We were not under orders to kick in a "Fast Finish," so we paired up again, Lisa and me, and rolled on down to Mopac again, and onto the trail. Lisa told me to go on with one mile to go, so I pushed just a tiny bit from there, but nothing super fast. Right when I finished, I caught Steve again, just like at the tempo race. He had gone out with a different group. My legs felt sort of heavy and tired over those last couple of miles, but they didn't hurt. I'll chalk that up to my fairly aggressive return to Gazelles Compliance this week, plus the heat and humidity.

Splits miles 9-11.3: 9:01, 9:01, 8:44, 0.2 miles at 7:45. Running pace for 11.3 miles was 9:06/mile, just fine and dandy. With water stop time, it drifted to 9:44/mile overall.

After some water and a brief dunking under the outdoor shower at the Zero Mile marker, I joined the others for some striders (I did 6), and as usual, I felt much better on strider numbers 4 through 6 than I did numbers 1 through 3. Gilbert led us in some hopping and some form drills, and then Alex led the stretching today, per Gilbert's instruction. It was a very large group of folks there this morning, the biggest number of Gazelles for stretching in a long time. That was fun to see.

After that, a bunch of us went to Austin Java for some breakfast and further conversation, and we all had a nice time. It was a good start to the marathon training program, even if it was tough weather conditions.

I got to 28 miles this week, with 3 gym visits and a circuit workout. Full compliance with my weekly training plan. Hooray. Next week, I am aiming for a similar compliance situation, and I will add in the second recovery run on Tuesday instead of cycling at Gold's. Mileage should bump up to 32-35 miles next week.

Cycle and Gym

2007-06-08T15:46:00.000-05:00

Today I complied with the schedule (my own schedule, really, but still...), and found my way up to Gold's for a visit. This time, I got in 25 minutes of indoor cycling, using a HR target function to keep me going properly, and that felt just fine. In fact, I think my legs felt better after having done the cycling. Go figure.

For core exercises, it was the floor exercises as usual, plus a single set of both of the Roman Chair leg/knee lifts. Next time, I'll get to two sets of those. I also added the back raises back into the mix. My core is still weak, but it's getting better little by little.

Upper body stuff was the bicep curl, bench press, dumbbell chest flies, seated rows, and tricep extensions version of things, with 2 sets of everything. I did better on bench and tricep extensions today, and was pleasantly fatigued at the end of the workout. Later on, of course, I found that I could barely lift my arms, but that's the price of lifting sometimes. :-)

iPod delivered a fine selection of varied tunes, but my favorite was Steve James and Del Rey doing a cover of Chuck Berry's "Nadine." Their version is just the best. Two fine musicians having a blast with the wry lyrics and funky swagger of a great tune. I highly recommend their duo album called "Tonight." Every song is a pleasure to hear, and you can actually sense them smiling their way through the whole production.

EZ Runnin'

2007-06-07T22:44:00.000-05:00

Tonight, after some more cross-training yardwork this afternoon, I got out for the scheduled recovery run. I had a hard time keeping my HR down where I had hoped (150-155), but I ended up with an average rate of 159 bpm, which was fairly close, I guess. I just cruised around in the 'Hood for a little over 50 minutes, 5.25 miles. It was warm at dusk when I got out there, but not too bad as the sun went down. Mission accomplished. No leg pains, no real leg fatigue, just plain old easy running.

On Prince's birthday, the iPod delivered one of his tunes, along with a lot of Beatles, some Springsteen, a fun B-52's song ("Planet Claire"), Meatloaf and James Brown. The coolest tune was a cover of "Stairway to Heaven" by Rodrigo y Gabriela. It was very cool. Sort of classical sounding, then jazzy, and finally a sort of flamenco fusion deal. For such an iconic tune, the cover worked exceptionally well.

Tomorrow is a gym visit and some indoor cycling.

Let's Go Crazy

2007-06-07T11:41:00.000-05:00

Today is Prince's birthday, so I had to lead off with a song title, right? I like his music, but he is sort of Michael Jackson weird, in a purple sort of way. I guess musical/artistic genius is often tied in with, let's say, eccentricities. John Lennon had a beautiful Rolls Royce limousine painted in psychedelic scrawls back in the mid-60's, for instance. And there's the whole Brian Wilson (Beach Boys) playing in the sandbox (literally) for months deal, too. Oh, well.

As for my workout day, today was a successful Day Two in my Return To... Program. I hit Gold's after I dropped Jake off at his high school orientation deal, and started off with some easy spinning on the cycle, on almost no resistance, just to get my legs pumping a bit. 10 minutes. Then some good stretching, which revealed nothing in the way of bad stuff happening. I'm a little tight after yesterday's tempo race, but no pains, so I'm pretty happy with that.

I did the floor exercises to start off the Core portion of the workout, and it wasn't as tough as it was on Tuesday. That's either a good sign, or it's a function of having done circuit on Monday and then the gym on Tuesday. Who knows? Anyway, I added the plank series to the Core stuff today, 45 seconds each, and two rounds of those. Next time, I'll get back to the Roman Chair deals, which I despise, but are good for you.

For the leg exercises today, I did 2 sets of everything, and actually except for leg press, I'm pretty much at the same reps and weights that I last used for legs. That's not bad. I guess I have been running all this time, so those muscles have been used.

That's it for today. Tomorrow, if I follow through, I'll be back at the gym for actual cycling, then core and upper body weights. I'll get out tonight for 50-60 minutes of HR running, where I adjust pace to keep my HR pretty low for a true recovery effort. For me, that means 150-155 bpm, which is in my 60-65% zone. For Frank, I think that would be coming up on half marathon HR. We're all different, though. Know your body and all that kind of stuff...

Tempo Race

2007-06-06T09:50:00.000-05:00

This is a recurring theme, but for the first time in quite a while, I actually went to a Gazelles Tempo Run/Race. I must admit that this particular workout is one that is easy to convince yourself that you don't feel up to a hard run. But, in my continuing attempt to fully comply with the Gazelles Path To Marathon Goodness ("GaPaT MaG"), I took myself down to RunTex this morning for the big event. We did just a short warmup (1.2 miles), then drills, and it was time to get this party started. I was happy that my legs felt pretty great this morning after yesterday's gym visit and the Monday circuit. I felt pretty good almost immediately in the warmup, which was a relief.

Gilbert gave us a few words about the tempo run, including the "80% of your efforts" line, and promised us that although he was taking our times down, we shouldn't worry about whatever time we earned. This was to be a baseline for the long training season ahead. I smirked that we should sandbag the run in that case, but I knew that once we toed the line, I'd probably run pretty hard anyway.

And we were off! I settled into a front-of-the-midpack position with Brian, and we cruised the first mile in an open spot behind Anne, Brad and Marcy. I actually felt like we were running at something like 80% effort, but it was early. It's been a while since I've run a sustained hard effort, so I was a little nervous about really laying it out on the line this morning. We clicked off the first mile in a fairly nice 7:40, which was faster than I would have expected. Onward.

Brad pulled away ahead of us from Anne and Marcy, and by about the 1.25 mile mark, Brian and I caught up to them as well. Brian went on around them, but I tucked in with the girls for a few minutes, thinking that they are usually faster than I am. Still, it worked out that I eased ahead of them after a while, and I started tracking Brian again. He was about 20 yards ahead, and I just kept him in range for the rest of the run. It was cool seeing the front-runners on their return leg as we headed for halfway. I made the turn with a 7:45 second mile, and a 15:25 halfway split. Consistent, eh? Now, what did I have left for the second half?

I got a boost from seeing the rest of the Gazelles after the turnaround, and tried to maintain my form and speed. I think that's when I saw Alex coming the other way on his recovery run, too. Anyway, the third mile was all about maintaining the gap behind Brian, and monitoring how I felt. I definitely wanted to have a little something left for a last mile acceleration, and absolutely didn't want to stop and walk! There's something about counting down the mile markers in the second half of the tempo race that helps me mentally, too. It's nice to click off those quarter miles. I crossed back over the footbridge on the heels of a guy who I'd starting tracking in the last half of mile 3. Every time I'd push a little, it seemed he'd pick it up, too, so I just stuck with him for a while, as he was going about as fast as I wanted to go at that point. Mile 3 was 7:38, so I was bringing it home in pretty good fashion.

With just a mile to go (but it was still a MILE to go), it was time to dip into the mental bag of running tricks. I put a long-range elastic band around Brian, to get him to pull me along, and I continued to work on this mystery man on the trail with whom I was locked in mortal running combat. :-) Finally, I pulled around the guy with maybe 3/4 of a mile to go, and just kept on pushing. He didn't come back around me, but I wasn't looking back, so I didn't know if he was close behind or not. I got up that testy little rise under the Pfluger bridge, and from there, I knew it was flat running. I wasn't catching Brian, but he wasn't getting too much further away, either. Onto Auditorium Shores, then past Stevie, the guitar art projects, and finally Gilbert standing with his stopwatch. Done!

My last mile was 7:22, which made me happy. Overall, I scored 30:25, 7:36/mile pace. Definitely not a PB for this workout, but it was happily in the broad mid-range of scores for me, so I was pleased. The pace was faster than my Schlotzsky's Bun Run 5K race pace back in April, so this was a good effort for my comeback program. For me, this is the first time that my standard joke about the tempo race ("It's 4 miles at 5K race pace") was absolutely true!

A nice little half mile cooldown jog and 4 good striders later, we were done. I'm especially pleased that the striders felt natural to me. I've been dogged by a nagging left leg muscle strain, which caused the striders to be painful or clumsy events. This morning, it was a thrill to run freely at the end of the workout. Nice. Oh, yeah, it turns out that the Mystery Runner was a Gazelle. His name is Steve, and he's one of the new Chicago people. Cool. Someone else for our long run posse, I think.

Good stretching session followed, and that's about it. A good day at the running office, and this gives me some indications that I'm on the proper path to return to some good running fitness.

Gymtastic Return

2007-06-05T12:42:00.000-05:00

Okay, it's been a while since I've last darkened the doors of Gold's Gym on any sort of regular basis. There, I've admitted it. Given that I know exactly how beneficial regular gym work is to my running and to my general health, this is pretty sad. However, today I took some baby steps back to the road to Complete Gazelles Training Program Compliance ("CoGaTraPCom?") and visited the den of iron-pumping iniquity.

First thing I found out was that I've somehow lost my keychain Gold's tag, but that problem was rectified in no time by the helpful desk person. Now with new badging, I got to work. 15 minutes on the indoor cycle with 3 minutes of extra cooldown time (those darned computer-driven machines!) got me started, and so far, so good. I stretched just a little, maybe 10 minutes, to hit the most important leg muscles, and then it was time for core exercise.

As I hit the mats for the floor exercises, I found out that I've regressed significantly from back in the day. I managed my 2 sets of the three exercises, but they were really tough at the end of each set. That will come back to me, but it really showed me what I've got ahead of me. I didn't do any of the other core stuff today, since we nailed them pretty well yesterday in the circuit workout, but I'll gradually bring all the old exercises back into the rotation.

I did most of the leg exercises, only skipping the standing calf raises (machine out of order). I only did single sets of the 4-way hip machine (actually, I only do 3 of the 4 "ways"), and I was relieved that those nagging muscle issues in my left leg seem to be healed. I felt no discomfort at all, although I was slightly weaker on the left side. That'll get fixed pretty quickly. I did just a single set of leg press today, and as on most exercises, I found that I'm behind where I was back in December, when I last was totally regular with the gym. Oh, well, now I've got a target.

I had time for a quick survey of the upper body exercises, too. The bicep curls went very well, but I was way behind on bench press. Still, 2 sets each of those exercises, and that's where the most improvement is usually seen with me, on the upper body stuff. When you're starting from Less Than Zero, it's easy to improve. :-) I finished things off with lat pulldowns (no big problems there, at least!), and a pitiful demonstration on tricep extensions. Apparently, I haven't used my triceps for anything in many months...

Oh, music! The usual potpourri, of course. Started with Bob Dylan, and I got everything after that from Electric Light Orchestra (I've recently transferred a bunch of my old LP's to the digital world), Chicago, Warren Zevon, Tommy James and the Shondells, Linda Ronstadt, Ben Harper, Bruce Springsteen, Marshall Crenshaw and Mississippi John Hurt. According to iTunes, I've actually heard 790 of the 1103 songs on my iPod at some point. So, do I really need a 6 Gb capacity for music? According to those stats, maybe not. But, it's sure cool to have pretty much all of what I would call "essential" music with me at all times.

Anyway, after having completed the workout, I am much happier. Once I get to the gym, I usually sort of enjoy the process, after all. Now, Wednesday is just a tempo race with Gazelles (I plan to run, uh, cautiously), and Thursday is recovery running and the next gym visit. That's as far as I will plan at this point. One step at a time, one step at a time.

Chicago Training Begins

2007-06-04T10:48:00.000-05:00

Today, Monday, was the Official Start for the Chicago marathon training program here in the Gazelles Village. It was nice out, 68 degrees after last night's storms. The crowd was much more numerous than over the last month or more, and there were lots of new folks in attendance. That made it a lot more fun today. After a few brief words, we were sent off to Austin High School for circuitry. We only had to dodge one or two tree limbs knocked down in the storm, and had to dance across the little stream flowing down the drainage canal near AHS. Let's just call that a warmup steeplechase. It took the whole warmup to really get loose for me, but after drills, I felt pretty good. The various nagging muscle problems in my left leg seem to have worked themselves out of my life, so I'm relieved about that.

We went back to the standard circuit workout today, with 400m runs between each set, and I ended up with 4 complete circuits. Brian and I paired up for the medicine ball tossing after that last circuit, which burned a bit by the end of the three exercises. We took turns exhorting the other to be tough and finish the sets. Sort of funny, really.

The post-circuit extra fun stuff included some hopping, the 15/30/45/90 degree angle leg lift routine, and a round of fast feet. Gilbert changed (or enforced) our form on fast feet, and the new "Crouching Gazelle" position made it a lot tougher. Still, that's such a bonding experience at the end of circuits, that it is fun once you're done.

I cruised back and chatted with Rich, and for a change, we really did run at a recovery pace coming back. Go figure. You hook up with one of the faster runners out there, and you find out that he runs slower coming back from speedwork or circuits than you usually do. Can we derive some sort of insight here?

So, that's about it. I'm not in quite the shape I was last May, but as long as I'm smart over the next month, in particular, I'll find my way back into marathon fitness. Now, will I take it to the gym this week and get back on track? A breathless nation awaits the answer. :-)

Weekly (?) Update

2007-04-30T10:13:00.000-05:00

This morning, on a drizzly, muggy morning, Brian, Alex, Frank and I set out for the traditional 3000m shakedown cruise around the Zilker Park loop (a loop and a half, more or less). The chatter was fun, and after the warmup jogging and the drills, we were ready to roll. Since I'm semi-goal-less for Indy, I didn't have a specific time in mind for a purported half marathon goal pace. I figured I'd just run how I felt, and see where I am. As we started, the group quickly strung out, with Alex, then Frank, then Brian, then me. I kept Brian in the same distance range until we started the last 1000m, when he strung out his lead just a bit. I managed to keep a very consistent pace, and ended up with a 7:22/mile overall pace for the 1.82 miles (not quite 3000m, but close enough). Last year, I ran more like 7:07/mile with the same perceived effort, so that gives me something of a comparative number to base things on for Saturday's race. Last year's Indy was 7:53/mile. It'll be interesting to see how closely the statistical things match up after the race...

After a quick sip of water, we headed back, and again enjoyed the conversation. I got bombed by a bird while passing under the Lamar bridge, which was disconcerting, but I'll try not to take it personally. At least it hit my leg and not my head or shoulder (I know, Yuck!). It's a pretty good feeling to hang out with the Indy Gazelles, and I'm looking forward to the trip, as usual. We chatted a bit after we got finished, and then it was time to call it a day. For the workout morning, a quick little 5.5 miles total.

To catch up from last week, I hit the gym last Tuesday for 30 minutes of indoor cycling and a single set core/leg/upper body workout. I'm just now trying to get the gym back into my routine, but it's slowly getting back. Wednesday was an easy 40 minute jog, using my HR monitor to keep under a low HR number (for me, at least) for absolute recovery. That felt good. Thursday, instead of simulating the 8x800m repeats on the schedule, I substituted a fartlek workout in my 'hood since I was housebound in the morning. I went out and did 15 minutes nice and relaxed, then 8 x 3:00 at more or less 800m effort, with 2:00 jogging between each repeat. After the 8 accelerations were done, I finished it off with 15 minutes of cooldown jogging. Given my current state of fitness, that workout was a solid one. Overall, I scored 7.6 miles for the long fartlek workout, and 4.4 miles for the recovery run.

I took Friday off (should have gotten to the gym, but...), and then cruised the 10 mile Town Lake loop with Frank and Alex on Saturday. We ran that a bit harder than I had expected, but it was okay. 10.1 miles at 9:26/mile, with all the water stops included. Our actual running pace was around 8:45/mile, I'd guess. Full stretching after that while we watched the Texas Roundup 10K pass us by at their 4 mile mark. My favorite moment was cheering for Dick Wilkowski, who is fierce at his 60+ year age. We saw him coming and yelled for him to "drop the bomb," and by God, he did! He just shifted gears right in front of us, and dusted a much younger guy ahead of him as he just blew by him. Awesome! I can only hope that I'm something like that when I get a little older...

Anyway, that catches me up to today. Yesterday, a bunch of my peeps went up to Oklahoma City for the marathon and half marathon, and suffered through a tough weather day, it seems. They all finished, but I know they'll be glad to relax for a couple of weeks before jumping back into the routine. We also saw Rachel doing her second post-Boston run on Saturday, so it was cool to see her again and chat briefly with her after we got finished.

The rest of this week? A gym visit tomorrow, 5 mile fartlek workout (10 x 1:00 accelerations) on Wednesday, off on Thursday (travel day), and the usual short jog and stretching on Friday before Saturday's half marathon. Is it wrong that I'm already looking forward to the post-half-marathon food and beer? I think not.

PMAD [and 10 Mile Pace Run]

2007-04-23T16:51:00.000-05:00

...and today I crawl a few more yards out of my Post-Marathon Affective Disorder following the AT&T Marathon. I suppose that I let that race get to me a little more than usual, and I moped around quite a bit with my running in the months following the race. I was a little bit dinged up, physically, with a groin strain, but I could have run through that a little more if I had really wanted to do so. I sort of let my running self-esteem issues get in the way of returning to Gazelles full-time, and that was not smart. When your main support group for your running is the very group that you are avoiding, then you're just not going to get much better, are you? Anyway, although I kept up the long runs on Saturdays, I was only fitfully running during the weekdays, and that's caused some deterioration in my conditioning. Not a fully terrible thing, but I've got a little work to do to get back up to speed...so to speak.

I came back in the last couple of weeks, and it's been gratifying to see that (a) My running friends noticed that I was missing, and were happy to see me back, and (b) I wasn't as far out of shape as I had thought. Sure, my HR is higher than usual for a given effort level, and my speed is a little off, but I can see that it's only a matter of another month until I'm more or less ready to roll with the old gang.

In the short term, my running goals are to get back in the full training routine, have fun at the upcoming Indy Mini (Half) Marathon the first Saturday in May (sort of a tourist run, depending on weather conditions), and prepare myself for the start of Chicago Marathon training in June. I've already enjoyed these last couple of weeks, back with the peeps, and I'd like to thank Brian and Frank for including me in some workouts lately, which has helped my mental outlook a bunch.

It was cool to follow all of the Boston Gazelles, especially Emily H., Leslie, Rachel, and Shannon, my old training buddies. I am envious of their opportunity to compete in the Super Bowl of marathoning for mere mortal runners, and I hope to be there some day. I'm still holding on to my goal of qualifying as a 50-year 0ld, which suddenly is not that far away!

Okay, today's workout was a pace run around Town Lake with Alex, Brian and Frank. Gilbert had us do 3 easy miles and then 7 at half marathon goal pace. The weather conditions were muggy and 70 degrees, but that was tolerable. My goal was to run the HMGP miles at 8:15 or so, which is about as fast as I'm planning on running at Indy in two weeks. We had some chatter for those first three easy miles, and then it was time to "Go!" Alex took off and was gone almost immediately. Frank was cruising in the silver medal position, and I sort of tagged along in last place, keeping Brian in sight as a pacer.

I was surprised that my first several miles were quicker than my goal, but I was running how I felt, and that's the pace my body delivered. I passed Brian during the second pace mile, as he was having a bad day after a long weekend of travel, and sort of cruised along from there. I grabbed water a couple of times (well, I actually drank the water, as that works better than grabbing it in one's hands...) along the way. It was fun to see Thon and Carrie on the trail this morning, too, around the 4 mile marker. I pretty much held onto pace to Mopac, where I took a slightly extended water stop of about 30 seconds. From there, it was a matter of convincing myself that I really didn't want to walk or slow way down. I found enough people to chase on the trail in those last miles, and salvaged this first extended pace effort.

I ended up with 3 miles of easy preliminary running at about 9:29/mile, not including a rest stop early for us, and then clicked off 7 miles of pace running at about 8:16/mile, including my brief water stops. Overall, I scored 10.25 miles at 8:38/mile, dropping to 8:50/mile including that 2:00 stop early. Altogether, I'll take that. Given that my goals for Indy are loosely defined as trying to get a 1:48:00 (8:15/mile), so that I'm qualified for the Seeded C Corral for 2008, those numbers look okay. Yeah, I'm already formulating a race plan for Indy. :-)

So, I'm back with the program, little by little, and I'm finding that running is really fun again. I'm excited about being a part of the Chicago training group for a change, even though the prospect of training those long runs in the heat of the summer is a bit daunting. The group that is signed up from Gazelles is a fun one, and I look forward to that challenge.

Return to Circuitry

2007-03-05T08:57:00.000-06:00

It was finally time to return to weekly Gazelles training, so I met up with a small crowd (is that an oxymoron?) for circuit training. Nice and easy on a beautiful crisp cold morning (35 degrees!), we jogged over to AHS. It was fun to chat and get back into our routine. Drills and then the mini-fartlek 400m warmup lap (50m quick, 50m jog, etc.). I got in three circuits and did an extra 400m lap before it was time to gather on the square for Gilbert's extra stuff. The circuit training felt fine. Except for a nagging left quad thing, I'm doing well since the marathon.

Anyway, the extra stuff included hopping, the 15/30/45/90 degree leg lift deal, arch/smash, leg over/under, 2 sets of the leg lift and push down deal with a partner, fast feet, and a rowing deal. The upshot of all that? My core is weak. :-)

The nice cooldown run was with Rachel and Colleen, and it was nice to see both of them again. Rachel is on the Boston track, so I don't get to see her as much, which is too bad. I stuck around and did the full stretching ritual with Colleen, and then headed home. I'm glad to get back into the swing of things, and this was a good way to return to it.

Hanging with the homies...

2007-02-28T09:01:00.000-06:00

This morning, I met up with Brian, Alex and Frank for a really easy 7 mile loop of Town Lake. The day was overcast and muggy, but it was still a fun run. These relaxed runs with friends are just the best. No pressure, no worries, we just hang out, run along, and shoot the breeze. Today's topics included love and marriage, women, cars, food, drink and hair dye. We laughed a lot, and I think that we're starting to feel the effects of the marathon fading away.

We chatted with Rachel after we were done, and then did a handful of striders. Those didn't feel all that smooth to me, but then again, that's the first speedwork of any sort that I've done in a few weeks.

We ended up just south of 7 miles for the day, at a 9:43/mile pace including the water stop at Mopac. Actual running was around 9:25/mile. The numbers are only numbers, though, as the important thing is just to let the legs come back slowly...sort of a working vacation.

Cycle and Gym [entered 2/28/07]

2007-02-27T09:13:00.000-06:00

Tuesday featured a quick visit to Gold's for cycling (40 minutes this time), stretching (20 minutes), core exercises and upper body weights. The details are not that important, but I did get there to continue the workouts, and I felt better after having visited. It's all about the journey, after all. :-)

Return to the Herd - EZ 7 Miles

2007-02-24T10:37:00.000-06:00

The first post-marathon run is always an amusing little event. Depending on how the race went, how soon after the race it is, and what you did in the meantime, it can be either a fun jaunt or an achy death march. Since I was a pretty good boy this week, I had worked out a lot of the junk left over from the 26.2 mile journey through Austin last Sunday. So, I was looking forward to seeing everyone today.

It was warm and muggy, of course, which reminded me how lucky we were with the weather last weekend. A really large group of folks gathered at 7:00 for 5-7 miles of easy running, and most were pretty happy to be there. After Gilbert gave us a pep talk, we set out for our loop of Town Lake. It was good to see Richard back with us as he slowly builds his running mileage, and we chatted during the first couple of miles of the run. A nice water stop at Mopac, and then we were off again. I ran the second part of the run with Colleen, Amy, and Brad, and we had some fun talks on the road. Except for some mild quad stiffness as we came down the hill on Riverside, my legs felt really great. I was pretty surprised, actually.

Anyway, we skipped striders today (I know my legs aren't quite ready for those yet), and met up for the full stretching routine. The difference in how people were doing mentally today as opposed to last Saturday is quite dramatic, but that goes under the "Duh" category of psychological analysis. :-)

We talked about our various race results, of course, and everyone is mapping out their spring racing plans already. After I stopped and chatted with the Boston girls (Renee and Rachel) for a bit, it was time to head on home. Tonight is the big Gazelles post-marathon bash, so that should be big fun!

For the day, 7.05 miles, 9:39/mile pace including the water stop. Nice!

GymStuff [Entered 2/24/07]

2007-02-23T10:46:00.000-06:00

Friday, I made a visit to Gold's for more easy cycling (35 minutes) to spin up the legs. A good stretching session of about 20 minutes followed. Then, I did the core/upper body workout, this time getting back to two sets on everything. I actually feel really good today. I have very little remaining stiffness or soreness left over from the marathon, so I guess I'm doing the right things in this first post-marathon week.

Easy 7 miles tomorrow with the gang, and then next week I'll return to a Monday/Wednesday/Thursday running pattern, with no more than 45 minutes of easy running on the longest of those runs. It should be a fun week.

Return to the Gym [Entered 2/22]

2007-02-21T11:52:00.000-06:00

Wednesday, I took my carcass up to Gold's to take those first post-marathon steps towards the spring running season. No running yet, but I figured I'd do some super low-resistance indoor cycling, some stretching, and then some core and upper body weights. And I did. 30 easy minutes spinning away on the cycle, enjoying the fact that my legs could do that at all, and I felt pretty darned good. I took considerable time after that, at least 20 minutes, to do most of the full stretching routine. Gently, mind you, but I eased into each new stretch, and let my legs tell me "when." By the end of the stretching, my legs felt even better. But that's all for them.

I did pretty much all the different core exercises, but only single sets of everything. After that, I did a complete upper body workout, too, doing the usual two sets of all exercises. I've decided that I need to get more focused about the gym, which really won't require that much more time. I just have to get out of my house and into the gym to accomplish this modest goal.

Having finished the last tricep extension, it was time to end the workout day. It was a nice first step.

Another Day After...

2007-02-20T20:47:00.000-06:00

I'm not too bad today, really. My quads are pretty stiff, but I don't really hurt anywhere. Just my pride. :-) I'm walking like an 80-year old man, but it will all pass soon enough. Tomorrow to the gym for easy stuff. It was great to get that race report done! Now, I shall reach for the guitar...

The Day After...

2007-02-19T18:50:00.000-06:00

Well, yesterday didn't go quite according to my plan, but at least today I feel pretty good. Am I sore? Sure. Am I a little stiff and awkward when walking from time to time? Yup. Stairs a challenge? Not too much, but I feel the quads anyway. Weight? Still down two pounds from yesterday's pre-race weight. I'll catch back up by Wednesday.

Today's post-marathon massage? Not too bad, really. Ron took it a little easier on me since the long race was just 24 hours ago, but he worked out most of the junk in my quads and calves, plus the fun stuff in my shin muscles. He gave me some tips about what to do (and not to do) this week as my body gets over Sunday's journey around Austin, so I have a full plan for the week.

Tomorrow, I'll go out for a nice walk and then do some light stretching. Wednesday, it'll be time to go to the gym to start the Great Core Strengthening Project and to do some light cycling just to get the legs spun up a bit. Some stretching on Wednesday as well, but no foam rollers. Not this week! Much the same until Saturday, when I hope to meet up with my pals down at Town Lake for a super-easy 5-7 mile jog to reacquaint ourselves with running. Next week is plenty soon to ease back into every other day running. No leg weight work for two weeks, though. Looks like March will be the return time for that and the speedy Gazelles workouts.

I'm already thinking about future marathon plans, but the soonest I'll run one is in the fall of 2007. I don't want to jump back into marathon training for a while. This spring will be all about 5k/10k/half marathon training and building speed. I need to get rid of those very old 5K and 10K PR's, after all! :-)

AT&T Marathon Race Report [Entered 2/20/07]

2007-02-18T19:01:00.000-06:00

Intro:

Ah, yes, the post-mortem. Marathons are tricky and occasionally frustrating beasts. I love all the long training runs with the Gazelles, the nifty schedule that looks so logical and exact (12 miler, 14 miler, easy week, 16 miler, etc.), and the general lifestyle of the endurance athlete. I even like the way that most of my non-running friends treat me when they ask about the latest training run or race, and I can say stuff like "Aw, we just ran 15 on Saturday." By that point in the training, it really does feel like a ho-hum thing, but it certainly is not to most of our friends and neighbors. Still, when Race Day arrives, some 5 to 6 months after starting your marathon specific training, it is with some trepidation that we toe the line. There's so much at stake, and unlike most race distances, you can't just do another one in a couple of weeks if this one doesn't work out for reasons under our control (bad pacing, bad diet, wearing brand new shoes) or not (weather, illness, getting trampled by a deer in the starting corral). So, after all this preamble, you're saying, "Get on with it! Just tell us what happened so we can go back to watching American Idol!" :-)

Sunday dawned clear and cold, exactly as Weather.com predicted. 35 glorious degrees when I peeked at the temp on weather TV. I got out of bed at 4:45am after a fairly sleepless night on Saturday, and pulled on my lucky PR racing clothing (gray BOA shorts, Gazelles singlet underneath, and red long-sleeved Gazelles shirt on top), plus other warmup type stuff for the time being. My properly broken-in Fila Providence III shoes (just 75 miles on them as of Race Morning) went on next, and I headed for the kitchen. I grabbed a bagel and a banana, some Powerade, a 12 ounce Accelerade, and my post-race Endurox, and headed for the door. The only warning sign at that point was that my weight was a pound lower than it was on Saturday morning. That's not what you want to see in the midst of carbo- and hydro-loading.

Despite my restless night of mostly non-sleep, I felt pretty wide awake on the drive down to the starting area. As I had thought, the traffic control folks had blocked the First Street exit way before the promised 6:00am closing time, so I went ahead with my driving plan and went south of the river to catch Barton Springs Road for my journey to parking. There were some lane narrowing issues, but I was able to get to the corner of Barton Springs and S. First without incident. From there, though, it appeared that there were serious traffic cone blockage issues to prevent me from going pretty much anywhere I wanted to park. I fooled them by driving through gaps in the cones (hey, it was 5:30am!), cutting through the One Texas Centre parking lot, and then skirting around the building to the side entrance to the parking deck, which neatly avoided the dude blocking the main parking deck entrance. I did take the precaution of parking in a spot that didn't have a number so that I was in less danger of being towed, but the garage was virtually empty.

Parking done, I finished off half of the bagel and the banana, and drank the rest of the Powerade. I took the Endurox and Accelerade, grabbed my gear bag, and headed for RunTex to meet up with the peeps. It was a nice walk, but I was getting keyed up a bit about the upcoming ordeal. I know that I appear to be fairly calm and low-key most of the time, but this was not one of those occasions. :-) The gang was gathering when I arrived, and it was nice to see my running friends. Alex looked really happy, but I'd say that pretty much everyone else had that look of guarded focus peculiar to the endurance athlete. Gilbert took a pretty big part of the crew off on a warmup jog, but a handful of us wanted to get our stuff to baggage claim way ahead of time instead, so we walked up to the starting area. Alex, Frank, Colleen, and Amy joined me in this mission. I was drinking my Accelerade a little at a time, to top off the tanks. We took advantage of some short facility lines, and then we pretty much got separated as we went from there to drop off our baggage way up at 3rd and Congress.

The pre-race organization was pretty good, really, but time starts doing weird things to you before a marathon, so I wasn't sure if I was moving quickly through all this pre-race hoo-hah or not. I found the DC baggage drop, and took a few minutes to strip off my warmup stuff, pin on my number, put on my lovely trashbag vest, load up my GU and Enervitene, and then I dropped off my bag. Free of all non-essential encumbrances, it was time to make my way to the starting crowds. I had the last little bit of my Accelerade on the way down to the bridge, and as I got there, the sun popped up. It was really a pretty morning, but it was soon going to be time to run, and we didn't have long to admire the sunrise.

I didn't see the 3:45 pace sign right away, so I camped out in the crowd probably 50 yards or more from the starting line, right by the 3:30 and 3:40 pace leaders. I figured the 3:45 peeps would find their way down pretty soon. I was standing around with Monique, Emily H., and Laura. Jennifer was apparently lined up with the 3:40 pace group, but I couldn't see her. By the way, thanks again for the great pre-race idea, Frank! :-) The 3:45 people settled in about 10 feet ahead of me, so I had my target sighted. Anyway, the fireworks went off behind us, which was pretty cool, and without an audible National Anthem or horn or anything else, we were moving. The race had started. Some walking, some stopping, some more walking, and finally we toed the starting mat. I clicked the Garmin, and we were off. I was some 3 minutes off the Gun Clock.

Early race:

It was seriously crowded as we headed down and then up S. Congress. I lost the 3:45 pacers in the crowd, but I kept them in sight at least ahead of me. I figured I'd just calmly get through that first big hill on S. Congress, and slowly catch up to the 3:45 folks over the easier miles that would follow. As usual, there were tons of folks who were massively out of touch with race etiquette, so I had to weave through mobs of walkers and much slower runners at the start. I guess they'll just never get a system here that takes care of that problem. Anyway, my first mile was fine, but I was pretty far behind the bobbing 3:45 sign up ahead. I sped up during mile 2, finding some clearer running room, maybe too fast, but by mile 2, I had caught up with the 3:45 pacers. I ditched the trash bag on S. First as we started downhill. There were lots of early music groups, but I didn't catch much of what they were doing in those first couple of miles. I took Powerade at the mile 2 water stop.

The first band I really heard was at Barton Springs and S. First. They broke into Buddy Holly's "Not Fade Away" as I passed them, which was pretty cool. I was doing that yo-yo thing a bit with the 3:45 people, but stayed within 30-40 feet of the sign. They did a subtle pace adjustment at the water stops, which was interesting to observe from behind them. Turn onto Lamar, down and up the underpass, and then into totally blinding sun on Fifth Street as we went east to Guadalupe. Even with a cap and sunglasses, I couldn't see anything. Finally, we turned onto Guadalupe with tons of spectators screaming at us going by. I felt pretty good, and just kept rolling along down Cesar Chavez. I took my first GU on schedule around mile 4, and I continued that alternating thing for most of the race. Powerade alone, and then 2 miles later, water and a GU. Rinse, repeat.

The course diverted from what I thought was the route slightly at Austin High School, but it wasn't a big deal, just interesting. There was a solo singer/guitarist at AHS singing a story song that involved a policeman, a guy, and either a picture of an old girlfriend or the actual girlfriend. I kinda wanted to know what happened, but I had a marathon to run. Bernard was standing just after the 6 mile mark handing out the Gazelles "Elite" bottles of Accelerade, which was really cool. I passed on that, but it was still pretty cool. Up the nasty little hill at Veterans, and then some more easy running down Lake Austin Blvd. So far, so good, all the way to Enfield. A rock band was playing "Breakdown" on Lake Austin. Was this foreshadowing?

Splits miles 1-7: 9:06, 8:19 (!), 8:27, 8:44, 8:27, 8:25, 8:42. Average pace 8:36, right on target.

The Hills:

Enfield commenced the rolling stuff and the seemingly relentless climb to the 18 mile point. We had some more sun issues on Enfield, but I stayed near the 3:45 group throughout this rolling part of the course. In the weird brain fog that I was in, it seemed that the hills had changed on Enfield from our training runs, but that was just a trick of the low sun and the tons of runners around me. Carrie was there for a second, but then she shifted to hang with her man. Once we turned onto Exposition, it got tougher. The half marathoners peeled off around mile 9.5 or so, and shortly thereafter, I think a priest blessed me with Holy Water from a tall ladder in the middle of Exposition. At least that's what I think he/she was doing. I didn't focus on who was doing the holy work, as I had my own work to do. With the crowds thinned just a little, I stayed in sight of the 3:45 group until mile 10 or so, but already I was a little out of sorts. Dennis passed me on one of the last hills. By the time I rolled up and over the Mopac bridge, I had lost the 3:45 folks for good.

I tried to find a good gear once the course levelled out on Jackson and Bull Creek, but it was sort of ominous already. Brian pulled up with me late in mile 13, and I sort of let him know, quietly, maybe telepathically, that I wasn't up to keeping up with him. By the time we had rolled down and up to Shoal Creek, he was gone ahead of me. The 3:50 people may have caught me by then, too, but I'm not sure. I had shifted to a new gear on Shoal Creek, and started calculating the pace necessary to repeat last year's 3:56:07, starting from where I was. It seemed to be a logical and makeable goal. At the time. Going backwards from the old marathon route, you got a real appreciation for how downhill the old course was. The new course was fair, but it was tougher than the old course(s). Oh, well. There was an unexpected sight at the water stop just before 2222 crossed Shoal Creek, when I saw the familiar Gazelles logo. Apparently, the Gazelles pitched in to cover two water stops, as I found out later. I got myself up White Rock to Great Northern, and commenced the first of three long straight stretches of road.

Splits miles 8-14: 8:35, 8:42, 8:48, 8:43, 8:58, 8:44, 8:56. Still okay, but it wasn't going as smoothly as I had planned. Average pace 8:41. Still on target for 3:50 or so, so I tried to hang in there.

The Abyss:

I was walking through the water stops by now, and at the second Gazelles water stop around mile 15, I loved the boost as they called out to me by name, but I was a little embarassed to be strolling by them. Yes, the internal psychological drama was starting to happen. I started heating up, so I busied myself with getting the safety pins ready to transfer the number to my singlet. Thought I'd give my shirt and gloves to Mary Anne and the kids if they were spectating at Northcross Mall as they had planned. The bagpipers were on Great Northern, and a band at the Gazelles water stop. I think he was just strumming his electric guitar when I went by. Lots of spectators again on the stretch behind Northcross, but no family. Oh, well. I held it together until I got past all those people, and then the urge to stop and walk overcame me. At the 17 mile marker, I started walking, and changed out of my long sleeved shirt, wrapping it in a neat tube and putting it around my waist. The gloves came off then, too, as my hands were really too warm by then. Bright sun, and in a singlet, at least, it was still perfect running weather. I just wasn't up to taking advantage of the conditions.

The long, straight stretch up Foster proved to be the toughest part of the whole race, mentally. For a mile or so, I mostly jogged gamely, with some walking, to the corner and the highest point on the race course. That long stretch was where I went through most of the list of stages of dealing with disappointment (anger, denial, acceptance, etc.), and I fought through some lumps in the throat and some burning in the eyes as well. Laura passed me on that street. I was totally bummed, and thought a lot about just stepping off the course and quitting the thing. I felt a lot of embarassment about letting down Gilbert and my fellow Gazelles, especially dressed in all my team clothes. I hated whatever weakness inside me that was causing this meltdown, but I didn't have enough energy to push through it. Finally, we reached the corner at Woodward and started a nice stretch that was built for gentle downhill running. However, I couldn't get going enough to enjoy it too much. I did some jogging interspersed with the walking, but it was slow going. I stopped taking GU at the mile 16/17 water stop, as it seemed silly to keep taking in carbs for what was becoming a nice recovery walk. I was done, and I had miles to go.

Splits miles 15-18: 9:28, 9:15, 10:17 (changing clothes), 9:37. Yuck. Average pace now 8:54. Maybe I could still salvage a sub 4:00?

Trudgery:

The 4:00 group passed me like I was standing still on the North Loop hills, and that pretty much ended my day. I couldn't accelerate enough to stay with them, and at that point, I broke for good. From that point on, it was a walk with some (very little) bits and stretches of jogging as I worked my way home. I wondered if I pulled off near Amy's house if I could find her house key and get Mary Anne to come and get me. That thought went away, but it did happen. The ClifShot Zone was sort of a grumpy blur. Leslie came by, happy and cruising, and tried to get me to go with her, but I just waved her on. She really tried, and I appreciate it, but it just wasn't happening today. I was in that mode of jogging the downhills and walking the uphills.

Avenue H was fun, if I had been running. There were lots of neighbors out to cheer us on. There was a graphic poster at one house that startled me, comparing running to, uh, something I hadn't considered comparing running to, which made me laugh. Across the street, there was a boombox playing "Chariots of Fire," which I haven't heard in a while. At least I laughed about it with some spectators when I muttered that the Chariots song was perfect because I was moving in slow motion just like that sequence in the movie. They got a good laugh about that. Just doing what I could to entertain the crowd. This was about when I started contemplating skipping this race next year (I've done 5 in a row, now), and thinking about attending next year's event as either on-course entertainment or some other volunteer/cheerleader role. I had plenty of time, so I started working up a list of songs and song types that I'd like to hear on the run.

Red River came soon enough, and I was in serious countdown mode. I started calculating, and I figured I had a good shot at 4:10 if I maintained my current pace. At least I had a goal now. There were familiar faces cheering along Red River closer to 38th, but I was sort of trying to become invisible. I'm sure I was a vision...shoulders slumped, pride visibly wounded. I started noticing, though, that I wasn't the only one reduced to this shuffle. That started reviving me a little, and as we passed mile 23, I thought maybe I could suck it up a little for "just 5K."

Splits miles 19-23: 10:07, 11:19, 11:38, 11:39, 12:02. Thank God I'm a pretty fast walker! Average pace slipping, slipping, slipping into the ugly...to 9:26.

Angels and Friends:

The nasty little down and up on 38th wasn't a huge bit of fun, but I was jogging a little more now, since I was getting closer to being finished with this long day. After getting up the hill to Duval, I started doing some better and more organized jogging interspersed with walks, aiming to be more mobile when I passed by the water stop at mile 24 where Sean would be working. As I eased back into a walk at the water stop to get my last fluids for the big finish, Sean spotted me. I was going to wave him off, but he wasn't going to listen to me. He was on a mission. He literally dropped his water cups that he was supposed to be handing out, and ran slowly along with me, matching my meager strides, in his full volunteer regalia, reflective vest and all. Debbie, Jorge, Patrick, and Liliana were yelling for me like I was one of the lead Kenyans. I got all verklempt. Patrick offered to call Mary Anne for me after I asked, but we couldn't get her phone to answer. Thanks anyway, Patrick! Sean ran with me for a while, talking to me and getting my mind off my unhappiness. He even gave me five reasons in answer to my question "Why do we do these things?" God bless him and my Gazelles friends! He finally peeled off at the UT campus, and I was surprised to find that I ran maybe a half mile with his help. Awesome, really, considering how things had been going. I jogged a little while longer, and then had to walk again. At least in those last miles, I was trying to do a little more running.

Miles 24 and 25: 10:52, 10:50. Time for whatever would pass for a big finish! Average slumped to 9:33.

The Big Finish:

I tried to figure out just what the 40K sign meant to me, in terms of remaining distance, but I just wasn't up to it. I guessed it was about 2K to go. That hill going up to the Bob Bullock museum wasn't too bad, really, and I kinda got it going up to the Capitol. If Gilbert was going to be out on the course, it was going to be sometime soon, and I really wanted to be running when I went by him. Even at my survival shuffle pace, I was passing people, which helped my mental state a bit. I passed up the Harriers beer stop, but I was tempted.

Gilbert was concerned for us, I think, as his face was in deep concentration as I went by. He was telling his photographer who to take pictures of as we came up to the Capitol. I'm thankful that I was running the whole time Gilbert saw me! I may have said something to him like, "I'm okay, but it's been a tough day," but I'm not sure exactly if that was just in my head or if I actually said it. Late-Marathon Psychosis, perhaps. Anyway, it was sort of lonely around the Capitol and down that steep drive, but as soon as I hit Congress, it was massive wall-to-wall spectators for those 7 blocks to the finish. It was a lot like when you come off the Queensboro Bridge in NYC, and you make a couple of turns in silence, and suddenly you pop out on First Avenue (or is it Fifth?) in Manhattan and the sound of the crowds is like a jet engine.

Anyway, I started counting down blocks to the finish line. Right at the top at 11th, seven blocks to go. Some ladies/girls were struggling ahead of me, and as I passed them, I told them, "six blocks to go," and they said, "Are you sure?" After you get lied to so often on the course ("It's all downhill from here" is my favorite), you have trouble believing anyone, even fellow runners. 10th Street, 6 blocks to go. Ninth Street, and I could sort of make out the finish structure way ahead. The gap in the street for the runners seemed to be narrowing, as spectators crowded along the sides and screamed. Surreal. Eighth Street, 4 blocks to go. Seventh Street, I looked up to the SFA Hotel to see if I could spot Mary Anne and the kids, and found them pretty quickly. They saw me, too, which was lucky because I'm sure they were looking for the promised red shirt. That boosted my spirits, and probably calmed down Sarah, who was worried about her Daddy. Right in there, I saw Stephanie Stanford, walking up the course, and that was fun.

Then, suddenly out of nowhere, Richard appeared beside me, jogging along, and just told me something like "You're looking good!" and then, more clearly in my memory, he pointed to the three people nearest and ahead of me, and shouted "Go pass them!" Dammit, now I had to run harder! Okay, Richard, here I go! Sixth Street, 2 blocks to go. I caught and passed two of the people, and was running down the next. Rumbling, stumbling... Fifth Street. One thin block to go. I saw the Mile 13 marker for the Half Marathon. I caught one more person, then one more in the stretch, and finally...Fourth Street, the finish line, and I was finished with this thing! Sheepishly, I put up my arms, and after a few steps, I punched the stop button on the watch. 4:10 and change.

Splits last 1.22 miles: 11:40 (9:34/mile pace for my "killer sprint"). 4:10:28. 9:35/mile.

Post-race:

I got my medal, and once again, the Austin medals are really nice, polished, heavy slabs of nickel or some such metal. First class medals, for sure. I started sucking down that first bottle of water, and kept moving through the finishing chute.

I saw Lisa right away, and she was terrific. She was there after running Laura in, I think, or Emily H. I forget now. But she really took care of me, and sort of aimed me towards Venus after I got my baggage. Saw Leslie, found Venus and settled down with her. She was getting her bearings back after a tough day for her as well. I was just tired of being on my feet. I got my food stuff first and then I sat down carefully, and started putting clothes on to keep from getting chilled, and drank down my Endurox. I saw Monique and Emily H., who both did better than I did. Emily qualified for Boston (of course), and I found out that Jennifer had run under 3:50 again. Those women are tough! I hung out there for a while and drank the Endurox while I waited for Venus to stop spinning (inside. She wasn't doing a whirling dervish thing.). I called Mary Anne finally, and told her I'd meet them at the DC room in a while.

After I got my nice red DC finishers shirt, I gathered up Venus, and we headed out of the hubbub. We spotted Ron, our massage guy, and he helped me sort of babble about the post-mortem of a bad run. Getting out of the runners area was very difficult. The spectators were crammed around the exit, which didn't leave anywhere for us to go trying to get out of the finisher's paddock. Finally, a stout volunteer realized what was happening, and started shouting at the specators to back up and leave us room to leave. Ron, Venus and Lisa laughed and said it was like being Rock Stars getting through the papparazzi. Venus and I headed up for a nice walk up to the SFA to visit the DC party and to get our DC finishers' swag. Since I had had so long to think about the day during the run, I was pretty much over any sadness or anger, and the walk up to the SFA was actually very pleasant.

I saw a bunch of folks at the DC room. Teri, one of my ex-Galloway peeps, was sort of the hall monitor at the first landing of the stairs. That was fun to see her. The DC setup was nice. Plenty of food that I didn't want, but the bartender hooked me up with a Dr. Pepper, and that was awesome. My family was relieved to see me when I finally got up there, and we spent some time chatting and reassuring them that I was disappointed but okay, physically. I hung out and chatted with the DC folks that I knew, and did a tiny bit of stretching as I sat on the floor. Mary Anne and the kids left after a while, and I left about 15 minutes after them. Venus stayed there to chill out a little longer, so I took another nice walk down to One Texas Centre to get the car, and I was done with the day.

The DC Finisher's stuff was pretty nice, by the way. Another backpack contained stuff from the sponsors of all the other DC races, including a cap from ARA (the 20 miler), a water bottle, and a nice little fleece blanket from 3M. Plus, I could cram my remaining post-race baggage into it for the walk to the car. Nice!

Mangia:

After a long practice with the classical guitar ensemble, I shook loose to meet Brad, Alex, and Frank at Mangia. We kept one eye on the Daytona 500, and offered up our stories of the day. It was nice to finish decompressing about the race with my Gazelles buddies. The pizza was deep dish Carnivore as usual, and it was great. The Live Oak Big Bark beer was quite tasty. After quite a stay there, we happily drifted out to head home, and the long long day was done.

What Happened?

Well, it's probably a combination of a bunch of things, but right now, I know that I messed up with my pre-race hydration and carbo-loading. It's time to do some serious work on that process, so that I don't find myself running out of gas on these longest races. I'm sure that a lot of other things were a problem, too. I won't make any pronouncements that I'm going to try to lose 20 pounds, increase my weekly mileage to 70, or start going to the gym 5 days a week, but I do need to make slight adjustments to almost everything in the running chain of causation. This running life is all about the Journey, and to get to the goals that are out there for me, I have to make sure that days like Sunday don't derail me from enjoying that journey. Running is supposed to be fun, among other things, and as long as I keep that uppermost in my mind, all the rest of the stuff will work itself out. I have a great coach, a great team of running partners, a supportive and loving family, and I'm not injured. Time to let this day pass into memory and look ahead, not backwards.

AT&T Goals

2007-02-17T14:00:00.000-06:00

Okay, here's the whole goal thing. We're going to have great weather tomorrow, it looks like, so that's one less thing to be concerned with. Awesome!

I'm going to run with the 3:45 pace group tomorrow. My Distance Challenge times tell me that I should theoretically be able to run 3:35-3:37, but I'm allowing a cushion for the marathon. In the past, I've usually made the mistake of going out too hard, where even 10 seconds per mile early can be a really bad thing later in the race. So, I'm giving up my pacing issues to the pace group tomorrow. Given that I seem to thrive on the group strength in training, why not see if that works in the race?

3:45 would be an 11 minute marathon PR, which would not be too shabby. If I'm feeling great, then I might try to push it late in the race. I certainly know the course very well, so once we get to Red River (mile 22) will be the time to figure out if I'm going to stick with the pace group or not. This is assuming I'm still with them at that point, for good or bad.

My major race goal is to finish strong. I've only had a solid finish to a marathon a couple of times in 14 previous attempts, and as I recall, it's a lot more fun to be passing people in those last miles than to be the guy shuffling along and getting dusted by dozens of people late.

So, I'm giving up the Distance Challenge corral privilege for tomorrow, lining up with the 3:45 pace banner, and taking a shot at yet another PR this racing season (I've set PR's at every race starting with Motive, so it would be nice to continue that streak). As we go through the hills, I may let the elastic band stretch a bit on the inclines, especially if the group seems to be powering up the hilly bits early. I know there's plenty of downhills and flatter stretches where I can catch back up, gently. The main thing I want to avoid with the pace groups is having to chop my steps or otherwise change my running stride to accomodate the group. Hopefully, that won't be an issue.

I've got my GU, my Enervitene, my racing shoes (Fila Providence III), my post-race gear bag, my trash bag pre-race vest, gloves, hat, and my lucky racing outfit (although I'm not superstitious). I've done the training, I'm rested and sharp, and basically I'm just ready to get this thing going. I'm keeping my fingers crossed, and hopefully, I'll actually get some sleep tonight.

Race report to be posted once I finish stuffing my face with post-race Mangia!

EZ Running, Some Stretching, etc.

2007-02-17T13:04:00.000-06:00

Today was the usual pre-race deal. We got to sleep in, and a sizeable group was there for 30 minutes of easy running on the trail. We got just over 3 miles, and I had no aches or pains, so I was happy about that. Pete sort of talked us into doing the drills instead of just a bunch of striders, and that felt just fine. The weather was really great, so we're all pretty excited about tomorrow's big race.

Stretching featured a whole lot of folks as we sprawled over our grassy corner near Palmer Auditorium. It was a light-hearted gathering, and the marathoners are really goofy right now. For some reason, a photographer that we did not know appeared and circled through the crowd snapping photos. That was weird!

Anyway, now we really don't have anything left to do besides waking up and running a marathon. I know that's a bigger deal than it sounds written like that, but after months of training, I'm just ready to run the race and be done with it for a while. Let the party get started!

AT&T Expo

2007-02-16T21:15:00.000-06:00

Today, I went to the marathon Expo to get all that over with so that Saturday can be as restful as possible. I waited until 3:15 or so to walk in (I know, that's only 15 minutes after it opened, but at least I didn't push my way in with the people who were standing right outside the doors 10 minutes before they opened!). Packet pickup was very smooth in the Distance Challenge pickup lanes, and then I found Frank.

We did some shopping at the RunTex central area, taking advantage of a coupon deal in the Participants magazine, saw a bunch of fellow Gazelles, and generally had a nice time of checking out things there. We caught up with Alex about halfway through the exhibitors, and both of them seemed very calm about Sunday. For a change, I might be the most keyed up of the three of us. Go figure.

I chatted with the folks at the pace group booth, and I feel even more certain that I will do better to travel with them this year. What the heck...I've tried 14 previous marathons pacing myself, so why not let someone else do the driving on Sunday? :-)

Tomorrow, we get to sleep in, and do the super easy 30 minutes and stretching ritual starting at 7:45. I'm looking forward to seeing everyone for one last time before the race kicks off on Sunday. Just 36 hours and counting!

Pre-race Massage [Entered 2/16/07]

2007-02-15T21:13:00.000-06:00

Thursday, I went to see Ron for my pre-race massage tuneup. There were a couple of spots in my hamstring that needed working out, but besides that, I seem to be in pretty good shape. I've started imagining that every tweak or twitch in my legs is a harbinger of some sort of pull or strain, which makes me a little more goofy than usual. I know...it's Taper Madness, but still...

Valentine's Running [Entered 2/16/07]

2007-02-14T21:05:00.000-06:00

Wednesday, I sneaked out in the 'Hood in the middle of the day for the last tuneup run before AT&T, 10 x 1:00 of fartlek accelerations. I set up the Garmin with all the necessary beepers, and went out sans iPod so I could hear those prompts. It was nice and cool, but lonely without the Gazelles around me.

15 minutes of easy running led into 10 x 1:00 of accelerations, with 1:00 easy jogging between. I didn't push as hard as usual, just touching around 8:00/mile during the faster bits, which was sufficient to get some turnover going with my legs. I finished off with just 6 minutes of easy jogging before calling it a day.

I scored some 5.5 miles total, with the fartlek portion averaging about 8:30/mile. It did the job, I guess, but I'm restless. I just want to get this marathon started! I did a pretty good stretching routine afterwards, and that was it.

So far, the Dr. Pepper fast isn't too bad, and I'm being much better about what I eat this week. It's all about Sunday, after all. There will be plenty of time for sugar-laden soft drinks and fried food after the race is run. :-)

Sharpening the Spear

2007-02-12T12:53:00.000-06:00

Today, on a drizzly, misty morning, we gathered up nervously for 4000m at somewhere just south of MGP, on the Zilker soccer field course. Gilbert gave us some encouraging words and laid out the entire week for us, and with that, we were off to Zilker. I was amused to find that I was in the lead group going over to Zilker today, whereas on Thursday, with that bunch, I was in the very last group getting to AHS. Different groups, for sure! :-)

There was a lot of nervous talk about the marathon, about our strategies for nutrition this week, for pacing during the race, and everything in between. So far, the long-range weather forecast is looking very good, but that could change in an instant here in Texas.

We did the drills, and as is somewhat traditional, they got shortened in distance again this week of the marathon. No one declares anything, it just always happens this way. Kenny met us at the top of the course, gave us the details, and pretty soon, we were off. The non-AT&T people were doing faster 1000m repeats (and more of them). We did two loops of the 2000m course, aiming for MGP or something just faster than that.

I ran with Jennifer and Colleen, and we naturally went out slightly too fast. We got it figured out for the rest of the morning, though, and ended up with about 2.4 miles at 8:22/mile. Snappy enough to get the legs to turn over, but not so fast that we used up too much of our reserves. I ran back to RunTex with Frank and Alex, among others, and we had more fun talk on the way. 6 striders at Auditorium Shores later, and we were done. I counted about 5.8 miles of total running, including all the pre- and post-game festivities.

I stuck around and did some stretching, and there were a good number of folks hanging around for that.

We are all a little twitchy nowadays, and every ache or twinge causes us to do a mild freakout, but I know that's mostly Taper Madness setting in. We're all reporting feeling a little bit of the heavy leg syndrome, where our legs are just reacting to their dramatically reduced workload.

I don't get to do Gazelles the rest of the week, until Saturday's little 30 minute jog and stretching, so it was oddly tough for me to say goodbye to everyone today. We've put so much time into this thing, as a group, and we've come to know each other so much better on all those long runs and workouts...it's exciting to be at the edge of the big race, but at the same time, it's a little sad that our little running family will change after Sunday. There will be some folks that decide that this was enough marathoning for them, and they'll go back to training on their own, while some may switch training groups or focus on triathlons. There will be plenty of people sticking around for the Spring 5K/10K/Half marathon semester of Gazelles, but we'll be saying goodbye to people, that's for sure.

The Last Long Run (before the marathon...)

2007-02-10T13:54:00.000-06:00

Today, we met for the Last Long(ish) Run before next Sunday's AT&T Marathon. We gathered up at 6:30am for 7-10 miles, incorporating all of the first 7 miles of the course, maybe even the first 8 miles. Most of my pace pals were in attendance, and we ended up with Frank as a Guest Runner, too. It was a fairly spirited run, and we had some good fun today. Without traffic controls, it was a little spooky running down Lamar, but after that, it wasn't too bad. There were a lot of construction vehicles and such along the route. Of course, that won't be the case next Sunday.

We got water/Powerade from Kenny's stop at Austin Tricyclist, and then made our second stop at the Rock under Mopac. From there, it was a modest fast finish back to Auditorium Shores. If it sounds like it was sort of a ho-hum run, you might be right. I think that a combination of nerves about next weekend's big race had a lot to do with it. We were anxious, and were extra careful about stepping up and down off of curbs and such. As Alex says, it's time to put ourselves in bubble wrap for the next week, to prevent damage before the race even starts.

The pace was quicker than usual today, as might be expected on this nice, cool morning (40 degrees, more or less), and we ended up with 9.12 miles at 8:49/mile running pace. With our two brief water stops included, the pace drifted up to 9:07/mile. My own fast finish for the last 2.2 miles was just under 8:00/mile pace. Sue, Jennifer and I cruised in at that pace, and for me, at least, it didn't feel all that much faster than we'd been going. I'll take that as a good sign.

6 striders later, we were done with the running portion of the day. I scored 9.4 miles for the day with the strides. A full stretching session later, in the chilly post-run time slot, and we were done. I'd say that everyone is ready for the marathon to get here already. All this training, and now we have to endure Taper Madness for another week!

Yasso 800's

2007-02-08T20:19:00.000-06:00

Thursday, I was able to rejoin the Gazelles for the Yasso 8-10 x 800m workout. We were to run our 800m repeats at a pace that follows the Yasso theory, so that my 3:40 marathon goal time (3:40-3:45, but who's counting for this purpose), equated to a 3:40 average 800m repeat. That pace would be a lot easier than we usually run 800's, but still snappy.

There were lots of Gazelles in attendance this morning, probably around 30. Weather was drizzly and cool enough (55 degrees), but not the most fun conditions we've had. I trailed the pack on the warmup, running along with Leslie, Alex, Renee and Rachel, among others. We had fun, even though we got to the AHS track after the faster Gazelles (i.e. everyone else) had started the drills. We fell right in with them, though, and only skipped the first drill. No biggie. Rogue was there with a good number of folks, so we all had to cooperate to make the track work for all of us.

Gilbert started calling out pace ranges and letting the groups assemble, sending them out as they were called. When he finally got to "3:30," no one stood in, so he was a little frustrated with us until I told him we were thinking about shooting for 3:35-3:40. He went along with that, and we ended up with 7 people in our group. The coolest thing about today's workout was that I didn't have to lead a single lap! Renee and Leslie, along with help from Rachel, drove the pace bus today, and they did a good job with it. We were just cruising along, finishing up lap 7, when Gilbert told us that 8 would be plenty. So, we picked it up a bit on the eighth repeat, but it felt easy. We wobbled a little on pace, but on balance, the group did a good job of staying within our stated range.

I felt a slight tweak in my hip flexor/groin area at first, which worried me, but it went away, so I'll ascribe it to "Taper Madness." :-)

The laps: 3:41, 3:37, 3:39, 3:36, 3:39, 3:39, 3:36, and a "run how you feel" last lap of 3:27. Average was 3:37/800m, or 7:16/mile. For a last tuneup workout, I'm pleased with it.

The cooldown run was with most of the same folks, and we had fun conversations on the way back. I was pretty quiet on the warmup...hard to believe, I know! :-) I stuck around for stretching with Liliana afterwards, and we felt the cold front come in as we stretched.

Now, one last longish run on Saturday, a little 2 x 2000m MGP type run on Monday, a bunch of off days, and a fartlek workout, and it's time to run that 26 miles, 385 yards next Sunday. Where did all the time go? It seems like it was just last week that we had a couple of months to go!

For the day, 7.9 miles.

EZ Runnin' [Entered 2/8/07]

2007-02-07T20:17:00.000-06:00

Today was a little 45 minute run in the 'Hood, nice and easy. All systems go, 4.8 miles. Nothing wrong, and I'm ready to go for tomorrow's 800m repeat workout, which is really the last hard workout until AT&T. Should be fun to go fast for the last time...