Getting back to Boston

Monday was a scheduled rest day, but I would have taken it off anyway with tender right Achilles, cropped up at about 16 miles of Sunday's run. So I went out early this morning with Lia to test it. It did fine. There were some other niggles, but the AT behaved itself. All in all, a good 6.7 at 9:33 pace. Nice start to the new year. Do this run every day for a year, I'll be very bored, but I'll also have 2400+ miles.

UPDATE: Got to work, started walking around the hospital, and the AT starts acting up. Not as bad as it was Sunday afternoon, but still sore. Think Wednesday becomes a rest day. I'm supposed to meet with Kathy M. Thursday night, so may hafta run Thursday morning. Or maybe take off Thursday too. Need to get this under control now.

Intervals at SHS in the new Adios shoes. Went OK, after three days off to rest the Achilles.

Took me forever to summon up the will to get dressed and get out on the road -- like almost 1:30 p.m. But the run went pretty well once I did. AT acted up a bit, but I was able to maintain decent pace anyway on a very hilly course. Finished 26K in 2:36. Had to work a little harder to maintain that pace than I had hoped, but that is of some value too. Twelve days to go...

Easy 7.5 from Marketplace this afternoon, doing (sorta) one of our Just Trippin' 5:15 a.m. routes. Made what I think is an important discovery. I realized I was kinda tightening the sore Achilles, trying to protect it, and it occurred to me that that was probably exactly the wrong approach. Sure enough, I tried to relax it and the pain subsided.

Intervals at the track, in the rain. Well, some of the warmup was in the rain. I went under the stands to stretch and by the time I finished, the rain had stopped. The legs were not up to 5K pace today; 10K pace was all I could manage, and even that was a struggle. I felt like I was going anaerobic to do that. But I ran 1600 repeats in 7:31, 7:29 and 7:27. Achilles started bothering me on the cooldown laps, in spite of my efforts to relax it, so I shut that down two laps early. Not a great workout, but I got it done. I attribute part of that to poor sleep last night, due in large part to iced tea consumption (moron!), and part to lousy nutrition. I gotta eat better for the next nine days.

Low and slow this morning with Kathy L. Just what I needed. Run tomorrow, then a couple days off. Gotta start eating better though. Maybe to OG tonight. Hoping Jennifer will be with us.

Whole buncha people in my cul de sac this morning to run everything from 12 (me) to 20 (Kay). Did the Okie run for the first 12, then I did a loop in the neighborhood for the final 2. Pushed the pace pretty well on the return leg and woundup with 9:25 average. Little faster than I wanted, but it felt comfortrable. And I'd already been called into work an hour before I finished :( So off I go. Hay's in the barn for Corndog now.

Recovery run this morning after stacking two rest days. The Achilles was interesting. It hurt, then it didn't, then it did again, then the pain moved up into the calf. Nothing that did or would slow me down but there nonetheless.

Dress rehearsal tomorrow, then just a shortie or two before Corndog. 

Out for a shakedown run this morning from the hotel in Port Allen. Fortunately, found a two-mile stretch through a commercial area without much traffic on a Saturday morning, and did an out-and back, progressing the pace down near 8:00 for the last mile. AT is there, but if that's all I get, it won't stop me from running fast. Run also set the stage for Aussie carbloading; I had waffles, bagel and a whole lot of orange juice before I even went back to the room after the run, and will load up on the OJ today.

Anyway, I've done all I can do. Trained, rested, babied the AT, tried to load the carbs this week. We'll see if I can perform tomorrow. It'll be nice to hit a goal for once. I really haven't hit a goal since the BQ three years ago. 

Ran a marathon hard and well for once. Not perfectly; I hit the wall and struggled for the last five miles or so. But I raced. And I didn't walk a step.

To be updated later... 

My mental image of  this race will probably start with one thing. I'm parked on a downtown street in Baton Rouge, 6:10am, it's still pitch black outside, and I'm putting on sunscreen. And I'm glad I did. That sun got bright, and I feel a little burn on a couple of areas I missed.

Race started just at sunup. I locked in with the 3:45 pacer. Uh, no I didn't. As usual, I fell back behind her. Then I picked it up just a touch, caught her at the 4 mile mark, and felt comfortable at that pace, which was maybe 8:29. So I kept going. Should I have backed off and stayed with her? Maybe. She caught me again at about 10 miles. I think she did a little positive split (last 10K in 53ish), but not bad, and she ran 3:44. Could I have held that pace? Maybe not. I hadn't started slowing down (much) when she caught me.

Course wound around, through the LSU campus (not many students out there; not a big surprise considering Monday is a holiday and those still around may well have been out late Saturday night) and through some very nice residential neighborhoods around several lakes. Then we headed east on a very long out and back. They threw in twists and turns so it wasn't as mentally imposing as, say, the out and back along the river in Little Rock, but I remember thinking are we EVER going to get to the end? Finally, past 19, we got there.

At this point, I still felt fairly strong. It was humid, although cool, and I was sweating heavily in the first six miles (as a guy who caught up to me on the LSU campus noted). But I was taking fluid every two miles, taking gels every five miles, and I felt OK. Until that return leg. Then the turnover just wasn't there. 8:30 became 9 became 9:30. I'm trying to wring whatever I could out of the legs, but there just wasn't much there. Finally, thanks to that final overpass and dead legs, mile 26 was 10:00 plus.

My friend Angela from RWOL caught me about a mile from the finish and wasn't even sure it was me, I looked so bad. "Is it your Achilles?" No, the Achilles has behaved itself, and it did. Your knee? No, I'm not having any real pain anywhere, I just hit the ^%&@ wall. So she cruised on past me, with her lack of training and sore hip flexor, and beat me by a minute and a half. There were a lot of people lining the course in the final half mile, and their cheering finally inspired me to go faster. Which is a little irritating. If I had that in me for the last .22, why couldn't I get any of it for the last 2.2?

Of course, I wore my Razorback shirt. I couldn't run a race in LSU country without doing that. A guy I saw after the finish congratulated me for having the stones to run through the LSU campus in that shirt. But I was pretty shocked not to hear a single "tiger bait". One guy said "Go Tigers". But that was it for the verbal abuse. One guy said "Go Razorbacks, for today only." I got a chuckle out of that. And lots of people said "Go Hogs". But the highlight was about at mile 23, when three guys who were most likely LSU students called the Hogs for me. That was on the out and back section, so they'd seen me go by at maybe 16. An hour or so later when I came back, they were ready for me. 

So I'm finally through. I see Angela again, along with her BF Shane, who broke his marathon maiden with a 3:15, the dog. I staggered over to the state museum which doubled as gear check and got my bag. Then I moved very slowly over to a little park by the Capitol where the race festival was going on. Beer, Cajun food, people sprawled out on the grass. Sprawling sounded really good, but I wasn't sure I could get back up if I sprawled. So I kept moving. Saw Kenny from Little Rock. I used to train with him (and dust him) fairly frequently. Yesterday, he beat me by 9 minutes. My gait is a shuffle, felt like about 12 inch steps. I saw Pat, who had seen me finish after she got through her half.  Ran into Angela and Shane a couple of more times. Got some food, got some beer, but decided what I really wanted was rest. So I shuffled back to the car (went too far down and had to double back), drove back to the hotel, zoned out and missed my exit, and had to go 12 miles farther to the next exit to turn around and come back.

I'd hoped to be the first finisher from Arkansas, which would have gotten me a cool hat as a prize. Turns out I was fourth. Kenny was third. The guy who got the hat was way faster than me, so that wasn't going to happen, but I didn't know that. If I'd run my target time of 3:45, I would have been 10th in AG (and Kenny still would have beaten me).

I'm OK with this finish, though. The nagging Achilles problems definitely had affected my training. I'm still trying to get back in real racing shape after last year's non-running issues. Not enough running at MP in this cycle. Really, not enough mileage. I need to be doing more 60-70 mile weeks, and I will for Bayshore. I'm not fast enough to get by on  speed; I need to be strong, and this level of mileage doesn't make me strong enough. If I'm ever going to get back to Boston, high mileage will be what gets me there. I sucked it up, I kept running, and I felt like I squeezed out just about all I had to give on this morning. The humidity and the bright sunshine didn't help, although to be fair the course was pretty shady. But my last four marathons had kept getting slower and slower. Today broke that trend, and it was my fastest race since Boston -- faster than Utah or CIM, and an hour faster than Stockholm.

Easy fish. Legs still feel tired and heavy, but no pain. Ran to SHS and back.

Easy 4, then pushed the last four tenths (basically all uphill) at 7:30 pace. That was to see if I could get any speed at all out of them five days after a marathon. Answer seemed to be yes. Can I maintain that pace for an hour on Sunday? Doubtful. Thinking I'll start at 8:00 pace and then adjust. Legs still feel heavy, although they loosened up during the run. No pain. AT behaving for now.

Drove over to the track run at Danville this afternoon. Tried to warm up with George, Rose, Joel, Bill and Don and they were leaving me. I'm thinking, this is the warmup and I can't even keep up. Couldn't keep up with them on the track either, but I accomplished the goal of averaging less than an 8:00 mile. Rose almost lapped me, not quite. Joel lapped me on the FOURTH LAP. Sheesh.

Got 5K and 10K splits. The 5 was 24:46. The 10 was 49:42, faster than my last two 10Ks. Then I ran 5.3 laps in the last 10:18, so there was a bit of a kick there. Not much, but I didn't expect much after 26.2 last Sunday.

Up at 5:15 for a JTTC run with Sherrie. Everyone remained vertical this time. Left knee was a little balky, perhaps due to turning left 60 times Sunday afternoon. Got through it at a 9:58 clip. Then I went back to bed for two hours.

Tried out the Newtons tonight at SHS. Did the first mile on the turf inside the track, felt OK with that, so moved out on to the track. Not entirely easy to take heel striking out entirely, but I managed fairly well. Felt good enough that I put the hammer down for the last two laps at 7:15 pace, although it felt even faster than that. Total of 5.25. Newton experiment is a success so far. Will I run the 5K at Russellville in them? Maybe.