Getting back to Boston

Hadn't planned to run today, at all. But my wife's car was in the shop, and my son's car wouldn't start, and he had an interview for a volunteer job at an area museum this afternoon, so he took me back to work after lunch and then took my car to the interview. Which left me with how to get home once I finally finished work. I could have called and waited for someone to pick me up, or I could run home. So I ran. Didn't have my Garmin, or even a watch, but my cellphone has a stopwatch feature and I clicked that on as I left the office, which is almost exactly a mile from the house. Got home and looked at the stopwatch, and it was my exact GMP for a four-hour marathon: 9:09. Spooky, huh? Or maybe I just have my body tuned in to 9:09 miles.

This is one of those days I got through on pure adrenaline, after next to no sleep (not because I stayed up late, but because I couldn't turn my brain off once I went to bed, which was actually at pretty much my normal time). So I'll be crashing early tonight...

In taper mode for the 5K, for which I picked up my bib after work. Ran 5 miles on the treadmill, the first four at just under 10:00 pace, then cranked up to just under 9:00 for the last mile. I'm getting really tired of the treadmill, especially as my mileage builds upnder Pfitz (tonight was scheduled for 9 miles), but crack-of-predawn every day or running in the evening heat outdoors just doesn't work for me. So until the weather is more favorable, I'll continue to do most of my Mondays and Wednesdays on the dreaded TM, and drag myself out of bed before dawn on Saturdays for the long run. Come to think of it, with a 7:30 start Friday, the 5K will be an early alarm clock day as well. Tomorrow's a rest-and-finish-the-work-week day.

Probably fortuitous that I cut back on my running this week, as big a crush as work has been. Next week, fortunately, will not be nearly as hectic between 8 and 5, because I'm scheduled to ramp up the mileage quite a bit and add the fifth day of running back in.

My first 5K. I really wanted to run a good race today, so much so that I ran the race in my head over and over last night, and consequently didn't get much sleep. The fact that my cat just came back from the vet and is audibly NOT happy about the disturbance to her routine didn't help either. But I ran a marathon on four hours' sleep, so I figured a 5K wouldn't be a big issue (and I could nap afterward).

The Firecracker is 250 feet downhill from the area of Little Rock known as the Heights down to War Memorial Stadium, looping around the stadium past the golf course and the Little Rock Zoo to finish on the east side of the stadium. The big downhill starts at about 1.8 miles and goes probably three-quarters of a mile down Van Buren Street to the stadium itself. My plan was to run a good, steady pace on the first 1.8 miles (which goes slightly downhill), let gravity accelerate me somewhat down Van Buren, but try to have something left for the loop around the stadium, which includes an uphill stretch past the Zoo.

Well, the plan almost worked. I ran the first mile in 6:54, the second in 6:53. But I didn't have much left when I hit the bottom of the hill, and that little uphill through the zoo (with the accompanying aroma of elephant dung and a distressed skunk) was REALLY difficult; mile 3 was in 7:47. But when I got to the top of the little hill at probably 2.9 miles, I was able to pick it up and brought it in at about 6:00 pace.

The goal was to break 23:00. I clicked my watch at the line: 22:27. Official time (no chips) was 22:31.02, which is about what I would have expected; I lined up near the front and got on course very quickly. I finished 178th among men, 16th in my age group and 212th overall out of 1008 finishers.

I did a test a couple of months back to try to figure out my maximum heart rate, and I got a result of 168. I did better than that this morning: 170. Both of which correlate pretty well with the old estimated MHR formula of 220 minus age, which for me right now is 173.

Sasha told me the other day that I have enough speed to get where I want to be. After this morning, I now believe him. And this morning's performance, for those familiar with Jack Daniels' work, bumped my VDOT number from 38 to 43 -- and correlates to a sub-3:40 marathon on both Daniels' and Greg McMillan's calculators. Now, Sasha, it's just time to put in the miles. Lots of miles.

You want to define this morning's run by pace, then it qualifies as 12.63 "easy" miles. However, there was nothing easy about it.

After Friday's race, I tried to take a nap, only to be thwarted by the other cat (not the one who yowled much of Thursday night) who insisted on snuggling up next to me and then taking a bath. I can sleep through a lot of things, but not through a cat bumping into me while licking his fur. So no nap (ignore that two hours on my Friday blog), and the beast just would not stop, or go away. Then it was time to go to the parents' for the Fourth; we stayed there six hours (and through two thunderstorms), and drove back home. By the time we got back, I was exhausted, and sore, and just went straight to bed at 8 p.m.

Slept pretty well, but the alarm clock at 4:45 alerted me to two things: It was time to get up and get ready for my Saturday run with the Crackheads, and my thighs hurt just about as much as they did after the marathon in March. Tried to stretch them out before I left home, and when I got to Pinnacle Mountain State Park for the run, but they just weren't going to stretch. Or stop hurting.

So the smart thing to do would have been to cut the run short, maybe try again Sunday. But I didn't do the smart thing. I did the obsessive/compulsive/Crackhead thing: Run my 12 miles. Plus. Tom and Hobbit sent me on an unfamiliar route (by myself -- none of the other runners were going 12), I wasn't sure about the turnaround, and 12 became 12.63 according to the Garmin. Twelve-plus painful, slow miles; not sure if the emphasis is on painful, or slow, because they were equally both. DOMS, hell. Nothing delayed about this soreness.

One thing I did get out of today. Before the run, Tom and Hobbit handed out a little surprise for the Crackheads: Little rubberized bracelets, similar to the Lance Armstrong "Livestrong" ones, but these are engraved "Crackhead -- LR Marathon". If I weren't an official Crackhead before, I am now.

I looked at the calendar this morning and realized it was July 7. So what? Because July 7, 2007, is when I made the commitment to be a runner again, with the simplest of starts -- lacing up the old adidas and running two miles around the neighborhood on a hot Sunday evening.

Since then, there have been 1138 miles, and who knows how many hours on the treadmill and the roads to complete that many miles, a lot of Advil and Celebrex and ice baths and stretching, seven pairs of shoes, a 5K, two 10Ks and one very painful marathon. There have been 27 pounds lost, never to be found (I hope), several pairs of pants I can't wear any more, several more I can wear again that I couldn't then. Some of my patients are actually worried that I've lost TOO much weight.

Was it Dick Beardsley who said in "Spirit of the Marathon" that once you cross the finish line in a marathon, your life has changed forever? I couldn't agree more. I'm not the same person I was last July 7, not by a long shot. I committed to achieve a very difficult, time-consuming goal and I achieved it, and as a result, I don't look at myself the same way I once did. Now I'm committed to doing it again, better and faster. Before I was husband, father, medical professional, proud Arkansan, Razorback fan. I'm still all of those things, but I'm also an obsessed Crackhead, and a marathoner, and proud of it. Finishing 26.2 is something I can be proud of for the rest of my life. Ditto a sub-four-hour, when I get there, and a BQ, when I get THERE.

OK, enough of this retrospective. Year Two began with a nine-mile run with a lactate threshold run tucked into the middle. It was supposed to be 4 miles of LT at just under 8:00 pace, after a three-mile warmup run. The warmup went just fine, but I realized shortly into the LT that my legs still haven't recovered from the back-to-back whammy of an all-out 5K and a 12-miler in 100% humidity on consecutive days. Three miles of LT at that pace was all I could coax out of my legs, and getting in three more miles at 10:00 pace to finish the 9 was not much easier. Tomorrow is down for an easy 5-miler, and I do mean EASY. I think I'm still a bit dehydrated/glycogen-depleted as well, and I need to really pound down the fluids, and the carbs, for the next 48 hours or so. But at least I've caught up on my sleep, somewhat.

Routine five-miler on the treadmill. Legs seemed to bounce back after last night's attempt at a tempo run; maybe a tiny twinge in the left hamstring but not as much as I frequently have after a hard run or two. Was able to gradually pick up the pace during the run until the final mile was at 9:00 pace -- and the heart rate barely crept above 140.

Kinda have a few distractions for the next few days. My son turns 18 on the 17th, and that's not even the major distraction that day. I have to take my recertification test that day, the every-six-years pain in the gluteus I need to keep my PA-C title. I don't HAVE to pass it -- I won't lose my license or my job -- but if I don't pass, I either have to retake and pass the test or I lose that title. Nobody really knows what that certification means except for another PA, but I still don't want to lose it.

The bad thing about that test is that it's going to cover a whole lot of things I never deal with. Imagine if you were a chemist working in, say, the oil industry, and you had to pass a test every six years about organic chemsistry -- stuff you absolutely never use in your day-to-day job. That's what I face next week. I have to be up to speed on treating high blood pressure and taking care of surgical patients and a whole lot of stuff I'll never use again -- until I have to take the test again in 2014.

Oh well, get through the next 10 days, and then I can hopefully zone in on family, job, and running -- in some order :)

Not quite sure how to classify tonight's run. Started out as a routine 9-miler on the treadmill at 10:00 pace, but as I went on, I felt better, so I kept cranking up the TM. By the 4-mile mark, I was at 9:00 pace (AKA sub-four), did two miles there, then cranked it to 8:34 pace for 2.5 miles and ran the last half-mile at 8:00 pace.

Run started late. My boss decided it was time for everyone in the office (including him) to recertify in CPR. In my case, it was loooooong overdue; my CPR certification expired in like 1996, and the guidelines have changed a lot in the last 12 years. So a nurse came over after work and we all took an hour and a half giving mouth-to-mouth to mannequins and doing two-finger chest compressions to baby dolls. But I still think if somebody hit the floor in front of me and I had to do something, instinct would take me back to what I learned in 1994, not what I learned today. Anyway, because of that, my nine-miler started at 7 p.m., not 5:30. Yet another incentive for me to start getting out of bed at 5, not 7, and running early. But still not enough incentive for me to actually DO that.

Actually, it poured this morning around 10 and temperatures dipped into the low 70s. That would have been as perfect as Arkansas running weather gets in July -- cool and rainy. But, unfortunately, I was seeing patients and filling pumps, not putting in miles in the rain.

So this week will mark two milestones in my running -- Monday's one-year run-iversary, if you will, and my first 40-mile week. So far, so good. I've done 23 miles in the last three days and feel pretty good. Recovery (4) run tomorrow, take off Friday, 13 on Saturday. I think I'll adjust my schedule for a recovery run on Sunday instead of what I've done the last three days; when 23 in 3 becomes 30-plus in 3, I may not handle that so well.

Easy 4-miler on the TM at 9:40 pace. A little bit heavy-legged tonight after two nine-milers in three nights, so a good night to do a recovery run. Take tomorrow off, then 13 around downtown LR on Saturday to finish my first 40-mile week -- then take my kid to the theme park for his 18th birthday. Fortunately, I don't have to take him around by the hand any more. I don't know if I'll be up for a major hike after a 13-miler.

Capped off my first 40-mile week with a very good run in the company (most of the way) of Pat Koss. Pat's a good influence on me in that he helps me keep from going out too fast. We started at the River Market, crossed the Broadway Bridge, did the reverse Karrot loop, came back across Broadway, then turned up 3rd and headed for the Heights. Pat twisted his ankle in front of the Blind School both coming and going, got a piece of glass inside his shoe (it looked like someone had gone down the street for about 100 yards breaking out car windows), didn't bring enough water or any carbs. I finally left Pat in the last 2.5 miles; Tom saw him when he came in and said he had the wild-eyed look of someone with low blood sugar. And a twisted ankle, no doubt.

Anyway, after going up Kavanaugh all the way to the Van Buren split, and thus retracing a good part of the Firecracker course in reverse, we turned around and headed back down Kavanaugh to 3rd and back to downtown. As usual, I picked up the pace on the Kavanaugh downhill. We stopped on the Promenade to refill Pat's water bottle, and I left him shortly thereafter, or actually when he stepped on another rock. So my splits for the last three miles, including on the downtown flats, were sub-9:00, which is pretty much what I was hoping for. And I felt much better once I got a gel down around the 9-mile mark. Those things are complete yuck, but they work. I'll take yuck under those circumstances.

Weather was no bargain; it was about 80 and very humid when we started. Saving grace was an intermittent breeze which was particularly helpful as we descended Kavanaugh from miles 8-10.

So, in a training run, I ran 13.2 six minutes faster than I ran 13.1 in the marathon in March. So I guess I could count this as my half-marathon PR, but I won't. I'll save that for Soaring Eagles in October, when hopefully I can knock another 13-15 minutes off my time.

However, the sleep issue has to be resolved, somehow. I went to bed at 10:15 and got up at 4:45, but that does not mean I got 6.5 hours of sleep. I think the five hours I listed above is overly generous, frankly. I just could not get comfortable, I had to get up to visit the loo several times, the room was too warm even with the fan on, etc. I think I finally got some solid shuteye after I got up for the last time at 2:30 or so.

So on to another 40-mile week, after I take Tyler to the theme park for his birthday. I think I'll spend my time at the water attractions getting wet. But first, it's nap time.

I was scheduled to take today off, but the legs felt good after yesterday's 13.2 and I figured I'd get a recovery run today and take off either Tuesday or Thursday instead. Easy, routine treadmill run at 9:42 pace. No muss, no fuss, not even much perspiration (a lot cooler around here today after a front came through this morning and dumped a bunch of rain).

I'm starting to think really seriously about what my goal for Memphis should be. I still want to break four hours, obviously, but beyond that? Maybe 3:50, maybe 3:40. Maybe even BQ. I don't have to decide just yet; my performances in training and in the three planned races between now and then will decide a lot. Especially the 13.1 in late October. That is where I'm really going to find out where my fitness is and thus decide what the ultimate plan is. I do plan to hook up with the appropriate pace group on race morning -- and stick with them this time. I do better running with a group of people, or even with one person (AKA Pat). I'm more accountable, less likely to slack off/walk, and manage my pace better. For now, IMO, a pace group is the way to go. And if things go well for the next four months, the pace group I may be with is the 3:30 group.

The reason I'm starting to think about the ultimate goal is that training is going so well. I'm handling higher mileage and faster paces, together, better than I had hoped I would. Frankly, I'll be really disappointed with "only" a 45-minute PR if I don't break 4:00. And I may be disappointed if I don't go quite a bit lower than that.

Pat won't be in Memphis, BTW. He's going to jog Omaha in late September and then seriously run Detroit. I looked at the Detroit website this morning and it looks like an interesting race. Something about running from the U.S. to Canada and back (including the tunnel from Windsor to Detroit) intrigues me. I may have to put Detroit on my future wish list, along with Chicago, Toronto, Athens and, of course, Boston. And at some point, I'd probably go run Houston if only because I lived down there so long.

Nine miles on the treadmill tonight, followed by 10 striders. Weather was cooler and drier today and I probably could have run outside semi-comfortably, but since I was on call, it's easier to have my phone with me on the treadmill than on the road. So I ran on the TM, watched the Home Run Derby while I ran, and it seemed to be a nice distraction. Turns out I got called twice in the half-hour AFTER I finished my run -- and the cellphone didn't ring either time. I really need a new phone -- or a new carrier, but Verizon is buying my carrier, so we'll see if that makes any difference.

It feels strange to say that a nine-mile run which ends with three miles of sub-9:00 running was easy, but it was. My pulse never got up to150 and I was barely winded after nine miles. Now the striders, that's another story. Maybe I'm still approaching them as I did wind sprints in junior high school football, except I'm probably running them faster than I did then (and I know I'm in better shape than I was then).

Got caught up on my sleep somewhat over the weekend, although last-minute studying and my reunion will probably cut back on that through this week.

Short and sweet. Four easy miles at 9:30 pace after a bad day at work and not much sleep, thanks to a mysterious call from a patient at 2:30 a.m. with a psychiatric problem (I don't do psychiatry). A little bit of studying for Thursday's test, then early to bed. Probably 9-10 miles tomorrow, unless I get pummelled again at work. 

Not sure easy miles is the right way to describe most of this run. I ran nine miles at 9-minute pace, which until 2 weeks ago WAS GMP for me. Felt smooth too. Then did last mile at NEW GMP -- 8-minute pace.

Kind of a mixed day. I had a miserable morning taking PANRE for five hours (bad), my son had a very nice 18th birthday and we had an excellent family birthday dinner (good), and I decided I needed to run off some of that dinner, so I went for a nothing recovery run. That probably falls into the category of junk miles, but an easy day is an easy day whether I spend it on the couch or doing three slow treadmill miles.

 True to my OCD tendencies, because both Pfitz and Daniels recommend not running under a certain amount of time, I added in one more "lap" of the treadmill to get me up over 30 minutes. I noticed a little twinge in my left hamstring tendons as I got going, but it felt like something that I could work out as I ran, and sure enough, it eased off.

I guess I'm getting old now. The hair (what's left of it) is gray, I'm just as (or more) likely to turn the car radio off as crank it, I have just about zero interest in pop culture or movies or why Brangelina went to France to have their brats, and the kid is now an adult. But I have my running again, and on the road, I can still dust a lot of young whippersnappers and I'm working on getting past more of them. Gray hair or not.

I'm really pleased with how I've adapted to higher mileage so far. I'm sometimes sore when I go to bed, but the soreness is virtually gone by the time I get up the next morning. That bodes well for me as I build up the MPWs through the summer and fall. I still have to be careful, though. I still have the tendency to do too much -- too many miles, too fast, not enough rest. It's a tendency I'll have to fight as long as I keep running, I guess, unless I finally get that impulse to overdo tamed.

Off today. Full day of work, then into the car and down to Arkadelphia for my class reunion (#30 for those scoring at home). I'm not the most successful member of the Class of 1978, but I bet I'm the only one who has run a marathon (well, I can think of one other possibility). But that's all right. I'm not going to impress people. I'm going mainly to see Mike, whom I haven't seen in 20 plus years after I spent much of my childhood at his house. Have to cut it off early tonight; the 6 a.m. Crackhead session looms Saturday.

Bit of a setback today. I got in bed by 10:30 and got six hours' sleep, but I was not well rested. Once I started running from Surgical Hospital, I realized the legs weren't rested either. Plus there were some GI issues left over from last night's food at the reunion. Once those were resolved, the legs continued to feel heavy, plus I sped up quite a bit to catch up to Pat. Then on the loop around the Burns Park ballfields, I started to have pain in my feet and particularly my toes, related to the wrong choice of socks. I can't wear those socks unless my shoes are a full size too big (which I may need to consider anyway). A bit of walking (OK, a lot of walking) from miles 7-9 helped the legs, but the feet still hurt until I finally got rid of the socks entirely.

So, with all that, I decided the planned 14 miles was just too much. So instead of turning left when I got back to the soccer complex, I turned right and returned to Surgical Hospital. It still ended up as an 11-mile morning, which I finished in a touch over two hours. Pat thinks I may have ramped up the mileage a tad too quickly, and he may be right. Next week is a bit of a backoff anyway because of the 5K next Saturday, so hopefully that will help get the legs back.

Routine recovery run at 9:30 pace. No problem with the feet today, although they both look like hamburger after yesterday's sock-free last 3 miles.

I'm tweaking the schedule again to allow a better taper for Dam Night Run. Recovery tonight, run two hard nights in a row on Monday and Tuesday, a recovery run on Wednesday, off Thursday-Friday, then an easy jog Saturday morning before going to Arkadelphia. I just realized this will be my first race in (OK, near) my hometown since, oh, April 1976. This was going to be a back-off week anyway. I think yesterday showed me I really needed a back-off week right now, so now's a good time. Then I go back to hammering next week.

The goal for Saturday is sub-22:00. I'll try to run the first two miles at right around 7:00 pace, then hopefully put the hammer down on the downhill third mile to get under 22. Maybe, if I can carry out that plan well enough, quite a bit under 22. 

Just a routine 8 mile GA run, as Pete calls it -- one mile of warmup, 3.5 miles at 9:22 pace (roughly MP + 20%), then 3.5 at 8:41 (MP + 10%). Also had strides scheduled for tonight, but skipped them. I'll do enough fast running Saturday night for one week.

I'm a little concerned about my weight. Weighed this morning at work, fully clothed with my walkie-talkie in my pocket, and I weighed less than 160. That means probably 155-156 if I'd weighed after my shower, for instance. I know I haven't been eating enough (and I also know why), and I need to correct that. I think 155 is probably a good weight for me to, say, take to Memphis, but I want to stabilize there and not do a lot of fluctuating. Can't fix the problem right away, but hopefully that situation will resolve itself soon. The sleep situation seems to be working itself out pretty well; I'm feeling more rested after getting caught up Saturday.

Another 8 miles tomorrow, most likely, then mini-taper for the 5K. I REALLY want to bust this one, and I'll be pretty disappointed if I don't get under 22:00. Wouldn't rule out 21:00, either; that would take 6:45, and I was running around 7:00 pretty comfortably at Firecracker.

Very pleased with this run. Started out as just a boring treadmill GA at 9:22 pace: I wasn't even sure if I was going to run four miles or eight. But I decided to throw in some fartlek -- MP, then some faster surges, then back to MP for the final mile. Handled it very well, even a 200-meter segment at 6:00 pace, which is probably darn near all-out for me right now, and obviously it became an eight-miler.

So, with all those surges, the average pace wound up at 8:52. And max HR was 157, with average HR in the low 140s (didn't exactly start and stop the Garmin at the right times, so the average may be a little off). But it was a good workout going into the mini-taper for the 5K.

Thank goodness for the TM. It's been either 100 degrees or very close to it for the past five or six days, and it's not cooling off any time soon. I still sweat profusely on the TM, but heatstroke is not an issue.

Routine four-miler on the TM. Started at 6.0, slowly advanced to 6.5 during the run (I get bored and want to get it over with; my road runs tend to be the same way). Really no trouble with the legs after back-to-back 8-milers; if I'm gonna get DOMS, it hasn't happened yet.

It's race day and ... it's just ridiculously hot. Car thermometer read 86 degrees at 7 a.m. and I didn't even park in direct sunlight.

Took the last two days off to taper for the race. I don't feel much stronger, but at least I got a solid night of sleep last night after several nights of flipflopping and not sleeping much. Got through work yesterday on pure adrenaline and I think the adrenaline ran out about 2:30 in the afternoon. I think I was asleep within five minutes of saying good night to Pam, which is a nice change.

Got up this morning and went down to the state Capitol to run with the Crackheads. It was the usual route up into the Heights; I decided to cut it down to 5 miles, so turned around at Palm Street and retraced my steps. As usual with Tom's courses, the Garmin says it was more than 5. All the stragglers thought I was hauling-A because I was on the way back so early, but I really was running slower than usual (9:40 average including the downhill return leg), I just ran less than most people. Pat left an hour earlier on his 14-miler; his car was in the lot when I got there at 5:30.

So the plan now is to go back to bed for a while, take it easy this afternoon and head for Arkadelphia somewhere around 5:30. Pam wants to attend a going-away party for one of the psychiatrists at her hospital at 5, so I'm not sure how this is going to work out, but she knows I want to be at the race site no later than 7 -- about the time the temperature goes back below 100.

Update after the race. But no sub-21. Or 22. Or 23. Or 24. It was still 95 or so when I got to the site an hour before the scheduled start (notice I said scheduled; more on that later). Got my packet and bib easily enough, then lined up to get a ride up the hill to the start. The vehicle of choice was a lumber yard truck, stacked with 2x12s to serve as benches. That ride scared the HELL out of me. Thirty mph, twisting road, nothing to hold on to. I think my HR got as high on that truck as it did during the race.

So we get up to the top, the truck disgorges us and goes back down for another load (this pattern would continue for the next hour-plus; I got to the top 35 minutes before the scheduled start). Went for a mile jog to loosen up, then stretched. So far so good. Still hot, but the sun's behind the trees so not too bad. Around 10 til, went to line up. Then I see the trucks unloading again up the road. Then again, 15 minutes later. Then again. Finally, with me standing in the mob for 45 minutes in 90-plus degree heat and nothing to drink, they start the race at 8:35 or so.

Despite the large number of people on a narrow road, it was not too difficult to get my pace going. I hit the first mile in just about what I had hoped. But the legs are not feeling good. Is it dehydration, is it tightening up standing on the road, is it the effects of running five miles this morning, all of the above, or something else? Anyway, I keep pushing, for a while. Then the walk monster jumped on me. Then jumped on me again. Then again. I've gone fast enough early that I didn't get passed by too many people even while walking. I can't see my Garmin (it's completely dark by now), but I have a pretty good idea my sub-22 is out the window. Then I realize I'm on the final downhill and pick up the pace, then as I turned off the downhill and into the parking lot where the finish is located, I'm hauling-A and passing all kinds of people. Got to the line and click off my timer: 24:03; gun time is 24:08 or so (no chips here), maxed out at 170 HR, same as at Firecracker.

Mile splits, from the Garmin: 6:58 (good), 7:09 (not too bad), 9:00 (yuck), and the last 0.17 at 5:30 pace (registered as more than race distance, as usual). Official results: 144th among men, 15th in my age group, time 24:04.70.

Obviously, I have to work on my discipline. I give in all to easily to the walk monster, even on flat parts of the course, and the walk monster is not going to get me to Boston. And I should have paid more attention to hydration; I figured it wouldn't be a big deal in a 23-minute race, but it was the hour-plus before the race that got me. And I have to remember that I haven't been training for 5Ks; I haven't done a tempo run in weeks, and haven't done intervals in longer than that. I'm trying to run 5Ks off marathon training, hoping that better endurance would substitute for lack of specific training.

Oh well, my 5K season is over. Next race, a 20K in two months, by which time I'll be up to 60 mpw if training goes well. If I run the same overall pace then as I did tonight (including the walk monster), I'll be very pleased. But there's a lot of work to be done to be able to run 12 miles at 7:36 pace.

Decided to run tonight to get out the kinks from the 5K. Just a routine 4 on the TM at 9:30 pace. It poured this morning, which only succeeded in making it MORE humid.

For now, I think I'll do a recovery run on Sunday and reduce my other weekly runs except for Saturday to keep my weekly mileage unchanged. That may change when Wednesday starts to become a 14-miler, but for now it works, and we'll see how I tolerate six-day weeks at slightly lesser mileage.

(Written Tuesday morning -- our DSL, and the phone line that goes with it, crashed Monday evening, right in the middle of my son's online final for his summer school class. No stress around my household from THAT, no sir.)

Back on the treadmill Monday for a tempo run. Warmed up for 2.5 miles, then cranked it up to 7:41 pace for four miles, then warm down for a mile and a half. Which means I ran 5K faster last night on the treadmill than I did in the race Saturday night <shrugs>. The run itself went OK, but then about three hours later the pain arrived in full. The quads were howling. Ibuprofen and stretching controlled it enough to let me get SOME sleep Monday night, but they're definitely still very sore this morning. I guess the second hard 5K in 48 hours was a little more than I was ready for. Pleased with the run overall, though; that's the kind of workout I need to get to my goals. Get that lactate threshold up a little higher.

As the heat wave continues (another 100-degree day expected today), I asked Tom and Hobbit to e-mail me the route for Saturday's run so I can start at 5 a.m., before the rest of the Crackheads. They asked me where I wanted to run, since they haven't decided on a site. I think they'll probably put me on the River Trail loop, which will be the first time I've done the entire loop (about 14 miles) on both sides of the river. Four tonight, nine tomorrow, four Thursday and 15 Saturday would give me 44 miles, my new weekly high. I could just maintain that level, which is equal to the max in Hal Higdon's Intermediate plan, for four months and probably run a decent 26.2 at Memphis, but I'm not interested in decent. I want fast, or at least fast for me, so we'll keep working on the Pfitzinger/Necessary 24/60 plan.

Four routine miles at 6.3/6.4 on the TM, followed by a refreshing (?) dip in the pool with Pam. The water temperature was about 90, I think, so the cooling factor was zero, and there wasn't even enough breeze to cool you after you got out.

One thing I've noticed. When I first start runs, especially on the TM, my lower abdominals really hurt for the first 400 or so, as if I'd just done about 150 situps. Once I get into the run, or maybe once I get my core muscles activated, the pain subsides, but it's weird to have my abs hurt more than my legs on a run. Yes, I'm still working on core strengthening, including doing planks for 150 seconds.

I REALLY needed a good run this evening. Work was highly frustrating (an underling who acts completely unprofessionally and tries to undermine me, and I can't do a damn thing about her attitude, because I'm not her supervisor), and I needed to burn off a lot of steam. It took about eight miles to get me to stop cussing her and focusing on the run.

The run itself was a standard Pfitz GA -- warm up slow for 3, go to MP plus 20% for 3.5, then up to MP plus 10% for 3.5. Took an hour-33-plus to do it. It was tough, but not horribly so, and my legs feel pretty good now, two hours later. Maybe the busted 5K on Saturday served as a springboard, or a motivator, because I've had good runs this week so far. The real test, though, will be that predawn 15 on Saturday. Which, by the way, will cap off a 45-mile week.

Fortunately, it's supposed to cool off -- a little -- for the rest of the week. Doesn't mean it won't be 75 with high humidity at 5 a.m. Saturday, but at least it won't be 80 with high humidity.

Wrapped up my best month of training with an easy 4 on the TM. It was one of those evenings where I could have easily come home at 5:30 and gone straight to bed, but no. Went out with the family for a nice dinner, then after letting dinner settle/digest for about 90 minutes, I did my run. Monthly total: 168.89.

Took the bull by the horns a little bit and I think the problem with the underling at work is settled for now. As usual, there was some fault on both sides. Yesterday wore me out, but not because I was stressed over this situation.