Hell of a Weekend...

So last week was a great training week. Started off with 2 decently long runs, a good cross training session, and some legit above AT speed work. Anything after that would make it a good week, but I needed to do an actual "long run." So Friday was a rest day, and Saturday morning I woke up at 10AM, had a big bowl of oatmeal, a huge cup of coffee and hit the road. Saturday was the day I was going to prove that my training is working, to show that I can do the time and the distance. I ran 21 miles, all the way down to the University of Chicago, in about 2hr 30min. I wasn't pushing the speed, the pain came from the sheer amount of time I was pounding away on the path. It was only 16 seconds per mile slower than what I hope my race pace will be and I stopped alot for water, stretching and video taping (see below... again sorry for commentary/doofiness). Not to mention I wont have done 30+ miles the few days leading up to the marathon! I used my steadfast trick of listening to a few Bill Simmons reports during my run. Got the down low on a few fantasy sleepers and also found out that in a few weeks it's going to be 9/02/10 (get it... 90210). I was never a fan of the show, I'm sure it was the guilty pleasure of many 20 something males in the '90s (similar to what "The OC" was to my generation... I mean "Party of 5"... wait... wait... I mean "The Man Show"... ya that's it). Anyways, I want to thank Bill for keeping me company and amusing me during those 2.5 hours. At the end of the run I was pooped, and felt kinda funky for a few hours, but it was great! Sunday was an off day and today I did a fast paced 7 miles (still felt the effects of the run on Saturday). I have 6 weeks to go until the race, hopefully this weekend I'll do just short of 20 miles, and next week I will hit the 22 mile mark. After that I'll start to ramp up speed work and slowly start to lower the distance. At least that's the plan... will see.... till next time!

Somehow made it...

Decided to stay up late tonight, and thought this would be the best way to spend the twilight. So just to make things clear, I made it through my 4x 1mile workout today. I did 5:37, 5:55, 5:59, 6:10 and succeeded at destroying myself. I was totally spent at the end of the workout. The demons started talking to me after the second mile. They said, "Don listen: you can just take it easy now, you did 2 miles hard and got your heart rate way above your AT, take it easy." I had to tell the voice to STUFF IT, and I did it by focusing on my form. For the second half of the workout I started thinking about making my strides smooth and not waste any energy on "vertical movement." Mentally, starting the last mile was the hardest, but physically the third one was the most painful. I guess it was the fact I knew I had to do one more mile after that made it harder. It was somewhat funny between the 3rd and 4th mile I saw two girls running by me as I was recovering and heard one say "that guys slobber is AWESOME!" Probably should have stopped and got that girls number with that kind of mentality! During my 4th mile I had to battle with a woman on a bike who was going god-awful slow! I pass alot of people on the path, and many times those people are on bikes or rollerblades, so this wasn't that surprising. Unfortunately this time I had to run through patches of sand which made the run even harder and I couldn't seem to get totally past her for 3/4 of the mile. My frustration definitely propelled me by the end, and I'm sure she was just as frustrated with me as I was of her, but I still couldn't help but be critical of someone on a bike going as fast as I am running. This all goes back to my theory that we are all out there trying to better ourselves in one way or another, and there really is no reason to be critical of anyone that is doing work out there on the path. So thank you slow bike lady, you pushed me through that last painful mile, and even though my thoughts of you at the time were riddled with hatred and disgust, you made it easier to push my limits and feel the urgency of "the race" I usually find missing in most of my workouts.

Alright all, it is bed time. Time to put on my compression sleeves, take some advil, and dream of crossing that 26.2 marker under 3 hrs. Visualization... another topic for another post

Dread...

I am dreading today's workout! Sneaking a quick post in during work. Tuesday I did 10 miles, yesterday I did cross training (weights/erg/bike), and today I have my speed workout to do. That's 4 x 1 mile w/ 1 min rest at around 615 pace. Next to stretching, speed workouts are the 2nd biggest aspect of training I have been apathetic about. Run 18 miles, fine. Run a half marathon at sub pace, easy. Do 4 measly miles somewhat hard and I turn into a head case! I guess I haven't done high intensity stuff in a long long time. I used to love it... ok that's a lie... we used to do this workout in college called "Clubs" every Monday. First of all this put a damper on your weekend, but really even as you finished one Monday you were thinking about the next! Those workouts were 10x500m w/ 30sec rest on an erg, and your highest split was your "club." If you rowed before, you can understand how this type of workout would cause you to go insane. So that is what I am feeling right now, maybe to lesser extent. I'm going to do it, but I'm not going to be happy about it... watchout casual runners... here comes gumby (what i think i look like since loosing 20 lbs over past couple months)

I wish my face had wiper blades...

Last week was good up until I ran into my old friend Jasper Hassel from Cambridge on the beach path on Thursday. I was doing speed work, 4x1miles with 1 min rest, and noticed on my 3rd mile that some dude looked exactly like Jasper. Of course I yelled out "JASPER!" and got no response. I yelled it again, "YO JASPER!" And still nothing! By this time everyone around me thought I was a guy with non-cursing tourettes. But I was sure so I flipped around and caught him and lo and behold it was him, visiting from NYC on business. So after about 15 minutes of catching up we made plans to grab a drink later, and I tried to start up the rest of the workout... turned into a run home. I had already done 35+ miles that week, so I was pretty pooped and could tell my body needed to recuperate. I then took off 3 days by accident. Combination of friends being in town, roommate moving to Denver (sad day), and a trip to Toledo for Coach's retirement party. So today I knew I needed to do something big. I ran 15.8 miles at a pretty good pace, just under 1hr 50min. My training started late today, so by the time I got to mile 10 it was dusk and I quickly learned the advantages of running in the morning rather than at night... no walls of bugs! Lets just say after the run I wasn't too worried about my protein intake for dinner! YUCK! I had to put my sunglasses on in the dark to protect my eyes from all the gnats. I learned that basically I need to stay on the directly near the beach and away from trees to avoid the bugs. It was kinda funny seeing people swatting as they ran (i was doing the same and probably looked just as doofy). My legs are pretty sore right now, and my arches are still a bit sore as well. I took extra time to stretch today, something I have not been very good about doing over the past 4 months. Everything I have read says that stretching not only improves recovery time, but also makes you faster in the long run. I think why I have been so reluctant to stretch is because I am not nearly as flexible as I used to be while I was rowing. I used to be able to wrap my hands totally around my feet. Now I'm lucky if I touch my toes!

Alright, tomorrow is going to be tough... i hate you morning... you always ruin the best part of my day!

A Team Thing

So training last week was back to the 9 mile minimum. It was still a bit tough though. For example I was in the middle what was supposed to be my first "speed" workout, and didn't exactly finish the full workout. The workout was supposed to be 6 x 1miles with 1 min rest. I got about 2 x 1miles with 1 min rest! I may have gone a bit too hard, first one was 525 and second one was 545. I started the third but that little voice popped into my head and made me pull up. Everyone knows the voice. It's just the simple idea that pops into your head that says "you know you can stop right?" Back in the day when I was rowing, I was really good at shutting the voice out. I can probably count on 1 hand the number of times I gave into the voice, and all those times were during the off season. And that begs the question, "how do I go back to the old me when things get harder during training and when things are REALLY hard 2hr30min into the marathon? When I was rowing I always felt like I had to perform beyond my abilities because my teammates were counting on me. I had this narcissistic view of myself that everyone expected me to be the one they can count on if things got tough. Maybe narcissistic is a bit strong, but its something I think everyone has that competes at a high level in a team sport (see picture of back in the erg dungeon, suffering together). And that's just it, I am training and performing at a high level now. My macho-instincts have died down over the years (no joke, you should ask people like Joe Gwin and Arthur Peterson what they used to call me freshman year: "angry Don"), so even though I have been doing everyone on my own, it's going to take more on race day. That is why I am so happy I decided to joined up with the American Cancer Society. I have personal reasons of why I chose this group, but seeing the others running with the same jersey, and seeing the people on the sidewalks with the ACS shirts will give me the feeling I am on a team, that people are depending on me. Not only that but everyone that has supported me with kind words of encouragement and donations has really helped during all the times that voice pops into my head. The money I raise will probably be a drop in the bucket compared to other people, but hopefully this whole experience will inspire others to do something similar. That being said, I want to thank everyone who has donated so far! We have passed the $1,000 mark and hopefully we can continue this rate up to the race!

So this week has begun and thus far I have run 23.5 miles in 2 days. Yesterday I did 13.5 and did it in 1hr30min and today I did 10miles just over an hour. It was a great 2 days. This morning I woke up with sore as !?*$ arches. Weird because shoes are somewhat new and I've never had a problem with my feet (except for my toenails cutting my toes because i forgot to cut them... sorry... that was gross... TMI... OMG... ttyl... bff... sorry off on tangent). But today's run was actually pretty good. Tomorrow will be a crosstraining day: core, lifting, and cycling. Thursday will be a speed day and hopefully friday will be a long easy day (2hrs should do the trick).

Alrighty all... till next time! Keep spreading the word! Every $ helps!

Catching up!

So it has been a week since my half marathon, and almost 2 weeks since my last post! Don't know why writing seems so painstakingly hard right now. Everytime I sit down to write, I find my mind wandering extremely quickly. So before that happens lets get down to business... on sunday I ran in the Rock N Roll Half Marathon. The race started at 630AM, for the week run up to the race I cut my mileage in half and was doing my training at 5/530AM everyday. I was in bed by 830pm on Saturday and woke up at 430AM Sunday. I put down a bagel, a big mug of coffee, and an energy gel before heading down to get a cab at 515AM. I actually ran into a buddy just getting home from the night... I did start questioning what I was doing! The event was HUGE! Much bigger than I expected. There were 18000 participants, just look at the line for the porto-potties in the video below! One thing that pissed me off was all the celebrity cameo's a the event. It is a sad state of our culture when all the "celebrities" were just reality stars, a bunch of "no-talent-ass-clowns" just like Michael Bolton talks about in office space. Seriously, can we please stop promoting these people who don't actually work, that are paid just to go to events! I am constantly getting in arguments with people who talk about watching the Jersey Shore or any of that "Real Housewife" crap. I am happy to say that he biggest cheers from the crowd came for the olympic runner! So anyways, back to the race... I started out with the 1hr 25min pace group. I felt really good for about 5 miles, then I had to make a decision to either kill myself for as long as possible or pull back and let the group go ahead of me. I obviously went with the latter. But because I pulled back I was able to recover after about 2 miles and really crank it in the last 5 miles. As you can tell from the pictures above I was hurting by the end. I tell the story about how we turned the bend and I could see the finish I gunned it trying to catch the 2 guys ahead of me. Lets just say I started sprinting about a full minute too soon! It at least allowed me to die and then sprint again at the end! My time was 1 hour 27 minutes and 36 seconds. My goal was to break 1:30, and I think I left it all out there. It was kinda funny actually going through the finish... they corral you, pass out "finisher" medals (hilarious to somebody who used to get medals for actually winning... very reminiscent of the "participant" awards you would get back in grade school!), banana's, water, damp towel, and photo booths! I ended up sitting on the corner watching people finish for about 10 minutes... it was kinda cool to think i placed 162 out of 18,000, 28th in my division of 1200ish. By that time it was 8AM, and I am not going to lie, I felt pretty awesome about having ran 13.1 miles by that time in the morning! I kinda get why so many people get hooked to this stuff. I was able to find the pace setter for the 125 group, he gave me some good training tips and thinks that 3hrs is definitely doable if I really kill the next 2 months. Overall it was a successful event

This week has been a recovery week for sure. I only ran 4 days and those runs were short and felt like I had cement legs the entire time! Today I did 9 miles in about an hour, so I think I am back into it and next week is going to be my first week of speed work and end with an 18 mile run.

As far as fund raising, we are past $450! Thank you so much to everyone who has donated, and if you haven't yet please follow the link at the top of the blog!

Happy running!