Getting back to Boston

Started off March with a really bad backache from the moment I woke up. Hurt to bend over, get up, sit down, stand, you name it. Hot bath, stretching, ibuprofen didn't touch it. Finally about noon, tried the one thing I hadn't tried yet: Running. Jog around the block (0.8 miles) hurt like the dickens, but it got the blood flowing, and soon my back felt much better. I was even able to go shopping with my wife.

So I'm winding up with a triple workout today, so to speak, which may screw up my per-run average for March. After the 0.8 midday jog, I just finished a 6.25-mile recovery run, and will go for another 4-mile run later while my wife works out at the athletic club to cap off an 11-mile recovery day. Addendum: Wife didn't go to the AC, but I did, and legs felt good enough to crank it up to GMP for the last half-mile. Even put the 1% incline on the dreadmill for the first time in a really long time.

When I actually got around to looking at my training schedule for this week, I found that yesterday was supposed to  have been a 7-mile single, not a 10-mile double (or 11-mile triple, which is what I actually ran). And tonight was supposed to be a 10-miler. So I flipped days, sorta, and ran 8 miles of GA on the dreadmill. Also was supposed to do strides tonight, but didn't; I'll put those on tomorrow night's run.

Usually when I'm at the AC, I'm there at off-peak hours and not too many people are there. Tonight, it was peak time and the TMs were full -- but there was no line, so no one bugged me about hogging a machine for 72 minutes instead of the 30-minute limit. The woman on the TM next to me was interesting. She was running intervals or fartlek or something, and when she cranked it up, her leg turnover was something else. She HAD to be doing 200 strides per minute minimum; those little legs were a blur. Looked like one of those stupid commercials for Comcast cable internet (if you've never been subjected, consider yourself fortunate). She said she was going to run a leg in the Little Rock Marathon relay in two weeks. I think if she can maintain that turnover for 10K, she'll do quite nicely.

 Speaking of the LRM, today is the one-year anniversary of my first marathon at Little Rock. Undertrained, dumb as a box of rocks, hard-headed, you name it, I'm lucky I survived, much less finished. Fortunately, I learned from my stupidity and at least a few of my mistakes and managed to correct them for Memphis. After struggling to finish in 4:46, I'm reasonably certain that if I went out on a training run this weekend at a moderate pace and just kept going after the planned distance, I could easily finish 26.2 in 4:20 or less now. 

Definitely this was a good time for a stepback week. "Only" 64 sounds so easy after 80 and 76 the last two weeks. A year ago, I would have gone apoplectic if you'd told me I'd run 64 miles in ANY week, much less do it week after week after week. I topped out at 30 mpw for Little Rock, remember. 

Rest in peace, Adam Nickel. 

Surprisingly good run tonight. After an especially greasy cheeseburger did its thing to my digestive tract, I decided to try to run as much as my GI would let me, whatever that was. The plan was for a 13-mile progression run on the dreadmill, working my way up to GMP + 10%, which right now is about 8:20 pace, capped off by strides. Had to take one two-minute break, but otherwise no problems. Legs felt great, and I noticed as fast as I was going, my breathing was remarkably slow. The last five miles before the strides were indeed at 8:20 pace. And the strides felt pretty smooth at sub-6:30 pace. I couldn't have asked for this run to go any better -- especially not after the hour or so preceding it.

Actually passed up the dreadmill tonight due to nice weather and rampant DM boredom for a moonlit run along the Arkansas River, despite the objections of DW. Main risk on this run was the cyclist who ran me off the trail despite my reflective vest and that spotlight he was wearing on his head (he could definitely use it for some illegal deer hunting). Speaking of which, I saw more deer and more rabbits on this run than I did people -- and this in the middle of a metro area of a half-million-plus.

Anyway, this was recovery night after last night's hard 13-miler, and I kinda cruised 8.01, from the I-30 Bridge to the wooden bridge at Burns Park and back. Legs took quite a while to loosen up, but did better in the last three miles. With temps in the low 50s, no clouds and not much wind, it was a very pleasant night to run without either freezing or overheating.

I posted last night on RWOL that I felt like a slacker after finishing my 8-mile recovery run, and I wasn't sure whether it was because I "only" ran 8 or because I ran them slowly.

Well, 8 more tonight, and I think I have my answer. Tonight's run doesn't really fit labels like progression or tempo or fartlek. I think I'd describe it as a push-it, as in push the pace -- hard. I pushed the pace early when my legs felt like lead, and I really pushed the pace late when I loosened up. Lots of variation in pace, but not fartlek-type. And I ran mile 4 and mile 8 at GMP, mile 8 was actually significantly faster than GMP. Total time: 67:59 -- a tick under 8:30 average. And no slacking.

Ever have one of those runs where you just knew you were going to bonk at some point, the only question was when? That was today for me. I knew I hadn't been eating and hydrating properly all week, and the legs just didn't feel right from the beginning this morning. Plus it was 70 degrees at 7 a.m. (have I mentioned lately how much I hate running in warm/hot weather?) and I forgot to pack my GU gel in my new Amphipod belt, which has solved the abrasion-of-my-back problem but not the predawn memory lapse problem. So I just decided to treat it like a regular run as long as the legs would hold out, complete with the progression to MP + 10%. I managed to do that, and got in about three miles at MP+10 before the bonk. From there, it was just a question of getting back to the car as best I could.

The Crackheads are in their final week before the Little Rock Marathon and were only running six today. Since I was planning to go 10 miles more than that, I decided to sleep in an hour, start my run at a different site and go on my own course. I did all that, and darn if I didn't run into a mob of Crackheads on the Main Street Bridge and beyond on the river trail. I guess they selected a different course than I had expected for the final six miler.

One new thing today: The first time I had done the complete River Trail loop, both sides of the river and across the Big Dam Bridge. Started from the River Market, looped down to the Clinton Center, back over MSB and down the north side of the trail to BDB, across to the LR side, down to downtown, back to the Clinton Center and loop back to the car for the full 16 miles.

Legs still felt really dead this afternoon. Took about 5.5 miles to loosen up. Then, with the wind behind me, I could run decently. Before that, it was a struggle. Stretching didn't help. Neither did the 80-degree temps or the headwind in the first 3.5 miles. If today was a recovery day, I'm like the economy -- there's a lot more recovery needed.

Planning another five miles later on, probably on the DM. Turned out to be 5.02 in 47:00, with the DM set at 2.0%; legs felt a lot better at 7:30 p.m. than they did at 1:30.

Addendum, shortly before I go do my second run of the day: Have some thoughts about this process I want to get down. If someone wants to comment on them, great; if not, I just want to sort through what's in my head.

All the experts say train for where you are, not where you want to be, and adjust your training as your fitness improves. I don't concur with that, because my whole purpose in doing this is to get faster. I believe that I will get faster as my training improves, not the other way around. Put it another way, if I never ran a faster time, my training would not change under the experts' advice. I think I have to MAKE myself run faster times by working harder. Yes, that increases the risk of injury, but that's part of the process too. I'm seeking out my limits -- not only how fast I can run, but how hard I can train without breaking down. I want to listen to what my body tells me to minimize the risk of injury, but I know that in seeking out my limits, I may slam into one of them headlong. If that happens, so be it; I found one of those limits I'm seeking. Then I'll try to figure out how to change or get around that limit.

There's another limit that I found 34 years ago. As a 14-year-old high school freshman, I ran an 880 in 2:14 (yes, I'm old enough that I ran before all U.S. track converted to the metric system). Mediocre to be sure, but that was my best performance as a kid. The running calculators say that a 2:14 880 is somehow equivalent to a 2:47 marathon, if I trained for the marathon as well as I had trained for that half-mile as a ninth-grader (was that the best I could have done? Who knows?). The calculators also say that that 2:14 880 indicates a VDOT of 63. I also ran a 2-mile in 11:02 as a 15-year-old, which converts to a VDOT of 57. Even using the more conservative number, a VDOT of 57 corresponds to a 2:50 marathon, properly trained. Point here being, at one point this body was theoretically capable of sub-3:00 marathoning. I'm 48 now, and I'm not going to run any more 11:02s or 2:14s, and I'm probably not going sub-3 either. But the questions are, how much of that ability I used to have is still there, and, unanswerably, how much more talent did I have then that I never tapped? That's what I'm trying to find out, and that's why I'm willing to slam headlong into those limits. This is all a big experiment, and I'm my own lab rat, complete with treadmill.

In this running life, my best performance was the half at Conway last October, when my 1:40:29 converts to a 44.87 VDOT. If I had been able to run Memphis at a 44.87 VDOT, I would have qualified for Boston. My 43.63 VDOT at Memphis left me 2:43 short of BQ. The calculator I'm using says that 3:30:59 (the slowest I can go at this age and qualify for Boston) is a 44.31. So, obviously, the immediate goal is to train so that I can get that 44.31 at least. But since I've already done better than that in a half, I know that 44.31 is not my VDOT limit. I want to know, or at least get a better idea, what that limit is for this body at this age range. Is it 45? Is it 48? Is it 50? The calculator says a 50 converts to 3:10:xx. Can I run a 3:10 eventually? 

My theory is to overreach some in my training, so that if I don't have a perfect day on race day, I still have room to get my goals. Train for a 47 VDOT or so to try to make sure I can get that 44.31, and maybe I can run a 46 along the way. That plan worked for me in Memphis in getting a huge PR and getting well under 4 hours. I hope it will do the same in Newport to get the BQ and beyond. I don't want to have to rely on picking up that extra five minutes to BQ as a 50-year-old in 2011 (which means a VDOT of 43.08). If I have to do that, so be it, and I'm sure not going to turn down a BQ, but that's not testing my limits. That's settling for a sub-limit performance I already know I can top. I want to squeeze what I can out of this body, while I can.

Mind over matter tonight. Had hoped to do my tempo run outside tonight, but had to work late and it was still 82 and humid when I got off work. Time for Plan B. So I went to the fitness room and waited for the DM to clear, one of the few times in two years I've actually had to wait for a dreadmill. It finally cleared at 7:30 and I started my 11-miler. One thing became evident quickly: It was just as humid inside as outside, the the fan didn't create enough breeze to compensate. In short, very quickly I was hurting. I had to stop twice to refill my water bottle in the first half of the run, which fell at the halfway mark of my five-mile tempo segment. Jogged two laps to recover after the second water stop, then cranked it back up for the final 10 laps. I wanted to stop about, oh, 30 times in those 10 laps, but I never did. And in spite of the heat stress I was feeling, I was able to maintain my tempo pace of 7:24 average for the whole five miles. Then jogged it in to complete the 11 miles.

I'm kinda guessing at how far I ran tonight -- the Garmin quit before I even started, and I was trying to stretch a known 14-mile route by one mile in the dark. I got an estimate of 14.7 using mapmyrun, but the trail twists and turns much more than I can indicate on mapmyrun. so I'm gonna call it 15. What I can definitely call it is a very encouraging run. After a slow warmup, as I went along I felt stronger and stronger, and if I've ever gotten the infamous runner's high, it was tonight in the last four miles. The pace got very strong, maybe even sub-MP, the legs felt strong, the breathing was even and I was in sort of a zone. Final time for 14.7 or 15 or whatever, completely run by feel, was 2:12 according to the clock in my car. If it was a 15-miler, that's well under 9:00 for the whole run. At about the 7.8-mile mark, someone told me it was 7:25 -- an hour and 12 minutes after I started. I ran the last 7.2 miles in less than an hour -- darn near my GMP. As good a midweek run as I've ever had. I took two gels and plenty of water, and there was enough breeze that the temps in the mid-70s weren't much of an issue. All in all, especially considering the warm conditions, I'm very pleased with it.

Lousy night's sleep last night; I guess I was kinda wired after that great run, plus the weather wacked out, with the temp dropping 30-plus degrees overnight and rain to boot. But it was off to the club tonight for 8 on the dreadmill. Managed to snag a mill with a floor fan for the last 6.5 miles, which helped. Legs loosened up OK after the halfway mark. Wound up covering 8 in 74:01.

So now I'm gonna try to catch up on that sleep.

A little different spin on my usual progression run tonight. Went to the River Trail for an out-and-back. Ran out for exactly one hour (6.30 miles), including a slow warmup and two shoe-tying stops. Decided I wanted to get as big a negative split as I could. Didn't look at the Garmin, since I knew the mileage, just ran. Got back to the car in less than 53 minutes -- more than a minute a mile negative split (showed 6.27 miles coming back, maybe because I tried to run tangents on the trail where I could).

I could run a lot of tangents coming back because I had the trail to myself. In two hours I saw two people, standing besides a car parked at the skateboard park, and one set of headlights. That's it. No runners, no bikers, no dogwalkers, and two furry creatures of undetermined species, maybe otters or muskrats or some other aquatic rodent.

Another lousy night's sleep in the guest bedroom (kicked out for keeping DW awake); ignored the strong urge to turn the alarm off and actually got up for a morning run at the AC. My back stayed in bed, though; it took almost four miles to semi-loosen and still doesn't feel great a half-hour later. But I got in the planned 5-miler on the TM to get the kinks out.

Still don't know really what my weekend looks like, because I don't know what I'm doing Sunday at the marathon. If my assignment doesn't involve escorting stragglers up Dillard's Hill, I'll probably do a double tomorrow -- or do a second lap of my 10-miler with the Crackheads. If I am on chase patrol, not sure what I'll do. I may still do a light second run just out of sheer OCD to get my miles up to 80 for the week. Definitely need to make more time to spend with DW, though. We've been invited to a Saturday night dinner involving friends who are participating in LRM, so that will be fun. DS is going to his state Spanish competition Saturday morning, so he'll be busy himself.

Another PR week of nearly 84 miles, topped off with 20 today. Met Pat and Kevin at the River Market and we ran the Little Rock Marathon half-marathon course, basically. Dropped those two off at the finish line, went back out on the course and ran the North Little Rock loop again, which got me to 20 for the day. So I ran the half-marathon today for free, instead of paying $80 for a T-shirt and a little medal tomorrow. :)

Amazing that, 24 hours before a marathon, there was very little clue that there would be a race run over that course. I saw a couple of crews just starting to set up. In fact, there's still a barbecue competition going on at the Clinton Center, four blocks from the LRM start, and the course through there is essentially blocked with RVs towing portable grillers. We had to dodge our way through them and through the clouds of hickory smoke or whatever. Not the smell I really needed at 6:05 a.m. And all of that is going to have to be gone by 8 a.m. Sunday.

Anyway, Pat kinda led the way on the run and Kevin and I tagged along. We started slow, maybe 10:00 pace, and Pat gradually accelerated. Finally, the last half mile or so, we just let him go and we kept on going at our 9:15 pace or whatever we were doing. Kevin is running the relay tomorrow, so he didn't want to burn off too much glycogen, and I knew I was gonna do another six-plus miles after the other two finished.

When I restarted, after a Gatorade/potty break, I continued at a good clip in the low 9s, back across the river just as we'd done two hours before. Came back over the river, hung a left just after the 6-mile marathon marker, and came back to the car. Total of 3:08 for the 20 miles.

I now know that I'm going to be a course marshal for the last few yards before the finish. Which will be fun, but it will also mean a very long day. I have to report at 6 a.m. and stay until 4. No running involved, I guess, so I went ahead and did the 20 today. When I went to the expo last night to pick up my T-shirt and lovely orange vest, I saw a woman flaunting her Boston Marathon warmup jacket, the really gaudy semi-official one (below). I kinda grumbled at her under my breath, but my next thought was, "Next year I'm going to have one of those!"

Interesting day to be sure. Up at 4:45 to get out to the marathon course by 6 to serve as a marshal on the last 0.1 mile of the course. Of course, the guy I was supposed to report to at 6 didn't show up until 7:15, by which time the 5K was well underway. Had to juggle barricades between the 5K and the half marathoners, then positioned myself on the median of LaHarpe Blvd, where half-marathoners would pass on one side, marathoners on the other. My job was to keep the course clear, to keep people from standing on the median, and, oh yeah, to encourage the runners. I quickly found that runners liked hearing they had only 200 yards to go; that quickly brought smiles to their faces. So I repeated it over and over. Saw quite a few people I knew -- fellow Crackheads, online acquaintances from RWOL, and even a few Facebook friends. One of my Crackhead colleagues won the women's marathon, which I really enjoyed. By 1:15 p.m., I'd been on my feet for more than 7 hours, and my back was shot. So I kinda, uh, sneaked off, after determining that there were enough other marshals in place and that there was no threat of mass chaos on the course.

After four or five hours' rest, I felt like running, so I went to the club for a TM recovery run. Dividing my likely pace into the amount of time left before the club closed at 8 p.m., I determined I could run 8 miles. Which I did -- and finished at 7:57. Good, steady pace, nothing difficult, legs left pretty good considering 20 miles yesterday and seven hours' marshaling today.

The volunteer stuff was interesting, but I don't know that I want to be a course marshal again -- unless I bring a chair. Maybe next year I'll volunteer to work the expo or stuff packets or something less wearing on my back. Or maybe I'll run the darn thing again. 

This was supposed to be an 8-mile GA run on the dreadmill, but you know me -- if the legs feel good, I can't leave anything alone. And I didn't. Eight GA became 10 hard, progressing from 9:13 pace at the start to GMP for the final mile. Average for the 10 miles was 8:23 -- pretty much MP + 10%.

Speaking of hard paces, I'm having to think seriously about when and where I'm going to race between now and Newport. The Cabot 5K is only 12 days away; Hogeye Half is 20 days away. Part of me wants to race Cabot, Hogeye and Toad Suck. The other half wants to pick Cabot or Hogeye, not both, but definitely run Toad Suck (which is a 10K I ran last year, so my performance there on the same course will provide a benchmark on how much I've improved in 12 months). If I do one or the other, I'm inclined to do Hogeye only; a half is more valuable to me, I think, than a 5K in preparing for 26.2. Maybe I need both -- all-out speed and a 13-mile tempo run. I'll think about it some more, but I need to enter Hogeye by Wednesday or the fee goes up. 

Back on the River Trail tonight, repeating the exact same 15-miler I ran last Tuesday. No smooth run tonight, no runner's high. I had to work this one from start to finish. But I kept the legs turning over when they didn't necessarily want to turn over, and kept the pace high (for me; I am aware this would be a recovery run pace for several people on this blog). The last 13 miles were all at sub-9, the last 1.5 or so were at sub-8. And I finished nine minutes faster than last week's run.

This is the kind of run that's going to help me get to Boston, I think, meaning I needed a few like this before I went to Memphis. Needed practice on keeping the pace high when the legs didn't feel their best, and that's what tonight was. Once I got through the two-mile warmup phase, there was never a point where I slacked off and let the pace drag. I kept trying to go faster, and as far as I can tell from the splits on the Garmin, it worked. 

Complicating factor to tonight's run. After taking care of some things that needed my attention, I went to the club with just enough time to run 8 miles at my usual TM recovery pace before they closed the door/kicked me out. That was before my electronic leash intervened at the 2.75 mile mark; a patient was calling and I spent four minutes or so dealing with that. That meant that my original planned pace was not going to be sufficient. So I ended up bumping it up a little more, then running the last half-mile at just about GMP, to just finish before 10 p.m. Then I forgot the cellphone on the way out and had to U-turn to retrieve it. Fortunately, our new NP is on the job now and my weeks on call are about to decrease by 50%. And not a moment too soon.

Lousy night's sleep last night, which I need to rectify tonight. Blogger out. 

Good, solid, steady 14-miler on the River Trail. Once I got warmed up, kept it below 9:00, and the final mile was at GMP. The legs didn't feel great, but I really didn't make a huge effort to push the pace like I did Tuesday, just tried to keep it steady. Consequently, it was a little slower than Tuesday -- but I still got through 13.1 in 1:55 or so.

Probably be up in a few hours to get the kinks out before work with a 5-miler at the club. That would mean my 22 on Saturday will get me over 80 for the second straight week.

Forced myself out of bed today for a prework run, figuring that with the miles I've put in lately, there'd be some kinks to be worked out before the big Friday clinic.

And boy, were there some kinks. The right hamstring just did not want to warm up. Glutes weren't much better. Today was as slow a slow run as I've had in quite some time; 39:00 for four miles, including a 45-second stretch break. Then some whirlpool/stretching time in the locker room. I may still be kinked a bit, but a lot better than I was at 6 a.m.

Very good 22-miler this morning with Pat and Kenny. Did a 10-mile loop on the River Trail, dropped Kenny off at his car, then a 12-mile loop across the river, up Kavanaugh and down Cedar Hill. I left Pat shortly after the turnaround at Mount St. Mary's and wound up beating him by almost a mile. We started slow, picked up the pace later, particularly after starting the second loop, and I pushed the last five miles pretty hard. The result was 22 miles in 3:25. If it's true that you should be able to run 22 in training in about the same time as 26.2 in a race, I should be in good shape in Newport. A 3:25 will get me where I want to be, which is Hopkinton.

I think this is definitely the best LR I've ever had. Certainly a lot better than my 22 in October before Memphis, when I really struggled. The weather was ideal -- mid-40s, overcast, minimal wind. A few sprinkles fell but not enough to get anything wet.

I'm starting to like the idea of going out really conservatively in Newport, then gradually picking up the pace as I go. Kinda what I did today, only with a little faster start; maybe run in the low 8s for four or five miles and then pick it up from there. It was nice being able to actually accelerate after the 17-mile mark today. The turnaround in Newport is at mile 15, so that would correspond pretty well with trying to put the hammer down at the turnaround. Psychologically, I do well with accelerating on the return leg of an out-and-back, which is one reason I think Newport was a good choice for my BQ. Maybe that realization that I'm homeward bound helps me overcome my governor in the Noakes central-governor theory.

Kind of a weird day. Started out at the inlaws in Camden, where I turned off my cellphone alarm set at 7 for an early run and stayed in bed for another 2.5 hours. Yes, I needed the extra sleep, but as usually happens when I stay in bed too long, my back was really, really stiff all morning. And much of the afternoon. Finally got it loosened with a prolonged stretching session, and I was fortunate that it didn't lock up again on the drive home. Then I took a nap when I got home before going out for a recovery run.

As usual, the RR was on the river trail, which I'm using a lot because I think it's the closest thing around here to the course at Newport. I started really slowly until my legs warmed up, settled in at a modest recovery run pace of 9:30 or so, but the last two miles the legs felt really good and I decided to put the hammer down after I entered Alligator Alley. The last 1.25 were not only faster, they were sub-GMP. So much for a recovery run, but the legs still feel good.

Trying to decide how to juggle the training schedule around Hogeye. Do I flip weeks so that the MP run originally set for this Saturday winds up on Hogeye Sunday? Or do I do the MP run this weekend and then a mini-taper for Hogeye? I'll think about it some more. 

Good thing I didn't do the early run in Camden this morning, I think. The pine pollen factory is working full blast down there. Just what my asthma doesn't need right now. 

Tonight may have been  more of a recovery run than last night was. Legs were a little sluggish, and I started late enough that an outdoor run was no longer an option, which relegated me to the dreadmill. Nonetheless, I chugged through 10 and change at a fairly steady rate, excepting one water/stretch break, and finished in 93:01. Just your basic put-in-the-mileage miles. Tomorrow, back out for another 15. I may do the complete river loop then; I'm tired of north side only running for a while. Tomorrow also will put me over 700 miles for the year, I think.

Ever since I decided last week to enter the Hogeye Half on 4/5, I had been debating whether to flip weeks in my training schedule, so that the MP run now set for this weekend would instead fall next weekend, and thus in essence be replaced by Hogeye.

Well, the weatherman kinda made that decision for me. A big line of thunderstorms rolled through here this evening, followed an hour later by another one. There was not going to be my scheduled 15-miler on the river trail tonight. But there could be a VO2 max run on the treadmill, which was on the schedule for next Tuesday. Voila -- instant flipped weeks.

So I get on the treadmill, warm up for three miles, and then crank it to 6:35 pace. My legs have one immediate reaction: "What in blue blazes are you doing to us?" This was my first real speedy speedwork since November, and I could tell it. But the legs adjusted pretty well. I really didn't have too much trouble holding pace, or finishing the scheduled 6 X 800 at that pace, and cooling down to finish the 9-miler in 76:29.

So I have a VO2 max run under my belt now. And it will have some time to take effect before I go to Fayetteville next week. Will that help me get down around 1:35? On that mountain range of a course, who knows? (It makes Little Rock look like something out of Friday Night Lights, if you recall the West Texas terrain that depicts.)

More thunderstorms tonight, so across to the AC for 8 recovery miles on the dreadmill. Took exactly 71:59. Then soaked in the hot tub (whirlpool jets disabled because it was too close to closing time, I guess), stretched, showered again and came home.

Tomorrow, my first scheduled midweek double, if I can haul my carcass out of bed in eight hours to do it. Total of 15 tomorrow; four early, 11 later.

Think I'm going to move into the guest room tonight and see if I sleep any better. Sleep seems to be my Achilles heel in this training program; I wake up, I dunno, six, seven times a night because I'm cold or I'm hot or my back hurts or my shoulder hurts or my bladder's full. At last on the memory foam in the guest room, the back and shoulder aches are minimized. Doesn't do the marital bliss any good, but then DW barred the memory foam from our room. 

Midweek double for me today, starting with four easy on the DM at the club before work. Hopefully weather will cooperate and I can get in 11 on the river trail after work. DW and DS have left me to go exploring northern Arkansas overnight, so I'm solo for a while. Meaning I can go run when I want to and go to bed when I want to.

Worked till almost 6 tonight, fixed some spaghetti and then went to the river trail to run. My legs never did really loosen up, but that didn't keep me from maintaining a sub-9 pace for about the last 7 miles of the 11-mile run. I must have had the real marathoners' shuffle going because the left hip flexors just were not going to loosen up and give me normal leg lift.

Not going to do the predawn thing tomorrow; I think I need another hour of sleep more than I need 5 early miles. I'll still do 5, just do them after work. Don't know if the family is returning tomorrow or staying up there. They seem to be having a good time, which is great. Wish I could be with them, but duty calls, and May will be here soon enough. 

Slept in just a tad with the house to myself this morning. Will coll weather in advance of (another) line of stroms coming in, I got in a 6-miler on the RT. Started out very slowly; by the end I was sub-GMP. Go figure. Anyway, this "back-off" week is going to end up somewhere in the 73-75 mile range. Not sure exactly which because I'm running with Pat tomorrow and he's not sure either. He's doing mile intervals at a bit under HIS GMP, which for me should be no real problem (that would be about 8:50 for him), and with warmup and cooldown, it should be in the 16-18 range. So I'll go with him, unless thunderstorms intervene, and we'll see how far we go.

Next week, I think I'll probably do a 15 on Tuesday and then back down from there in a mini-taper for Hogeye. Something like 10-9-15-7-9-8-6-13.1. Which is still a 64-mile week leading into a half. Then a couple of recovery days after that before I knock out an LT and a 24 at the end of the following week. 13.1-7-8-13-12 LT-8-24 equals 85, my big week of the entire cycle.

A bit under 17 today, but far from a routine run. Two reasons: I ran with my friend Pat, who is shooting for a sub-4 at Oklahoma City next month and is doing extended interval sessions at his GMP. Second, a cold front came howling in this morning with 20 mph winds, gusting to 40, and we were running directly into the wind for half of the run.

Eleven one-mile surges at 8:40 pace don't sound too bad, and maybe normally it wouldn't have been an issue, but with the wind, it was HARD. Especially when one of those gusts hit. The quads were not happy, but they responded when I asked them to respond. And on the last interval, I picked it up to pretty close to my GMP, which left Pat behind.

Went over 300 miles for the month today, too -- a new PR for me. Likely to get another PR in April before the taper in May. 

Kinda guessing at the distance on my first run; forgot to recharge the Garmin, which of course died, and had to semi-measure it afterward using car odometer. After yesterday's howling wind, today is much more pleasant: 50 degrees, sunny, very light breeze, absolutely cloudless sky. Even ran in my sunglasses, which I basically never do, and my hat instead of the everpresent headband. Anyway, the odometer says 3.1 from where I parked to where I turned around, so I'm basically calling this one a 10K. Took me somewhere in the 56-57 minute range, and, as usual, I'm pretty sure I ran the second half faster than the first (just hope I have the discipline and good pacing to do that in Newport). Just an easy, no-muss, no-fuss recovery run, and legs felt pretty good after yesterday's exertion. Good night's sleep on the foam helped.

So I'm thinking back to Chile Pepper, my first lame attempt at a race in this running life. Not in good shape, went out way too fast, crashed and burned, and finished 10K in 57 minutes. Today, a RECOVERY RUN (which really felt like a jog) was faster than that. 

Went back to the boathouse at dusk after watching Tiger win another one for my second run, a 5. Five turned out to be 5.71, and I tried a little experiment: Imagine that I'm at 24.5 at Newport and I need to run the last 1.75 in less than 14 minutes to get my BQ. So I ran in it 13:22, including 7:13 pace for the last .75. I may be doing quite a bit more of that in the next eight weeks, since I'm now 62 days from the race. Practice putting the hammer down when I'm tired and I have to suck it up to get there.

Leave it to me to not leave well enough alone. I probably should have kept tonight's GA run kinda slow just to recover from yesterday's recovery run. Uh, no. I started off at a good pace and got faster and faster and faster, until the last mile was just about at GMP. Total 10 miles in 86 minutes.

Been thinking about my strategy for Hogeye. I want to see how fast I can go, but the terrain may preclude the kind of race I ran in Conway, where I just tried to lay down 13 consecutive miles at the same pace. I'm thinking run about 7:20-7:30 pace for the first three hilly miles, put the hammer down in the "flats" at about 7:00 pace for the next seven miles, then see what I have left when I get back to the hills. What I'd REALLY like to do is go sub-1:30, but that would require a 6:51 average. Not sure I could do that on a flat course, much less this one.

Old OCD at it again. Not content with merely a big monthly PR on mileage, I had to run at least 15.13 miles tonight so that I could average 11 miles per day for the month of March. So I did. New course, sorta; started at the soccer fields, went across BDB, turned around at the 4-mile mark, back across BDB, Gatorade break at the car, then southeast on the RT until almost the end of Alligator Alley before turning around again and returning to the car. It was quite light when I started and pitchblack 2 hours, 18 minutes later when I finished. Getting buzzed by mobs of wacko cyclists for the first hour; solo as usual for the last 45 minutes. So I finished March at 341 and change. Now I start my mini taper for Hogeye.