F!#*^*@$ SERVICE CHARGES

Last night I pulled the trigger and signed up for TCM. I love this event, but haven’t run it since 2008. (Where does the time go?) As much as I love it, it still pains me to have to register nearly 8 months ahead of time. Sure I could wait, but then the price keeps increasing. Figuring that my thoughts about doing this race in 2012 wouldn’t change, I decided to register. I’ve probably bitched about this before, but man, that service charge really drives me crazy. At work, we are constantly trying to drive customers to the web because the order entry costs are cheaper. Yet when I sign up for a race online I have to pay $8.60 in service charges. Dang! I guess the $105 entry fee isn’t enough. I almost wish they’d charge me $115 without the service charge.

Okay, I got that off my chest.

One thing that’s been on my mind lately is making sure I’m getting enough recovery time in each week with this Endless Season program. I’m partially concerned because TCM is 8 months away and I know that I have a tendency to dig myself into a hole during the summer if I’m not careful.

Anyway, Pete Magill is another writer for Running Times and he usually writes about training for Masters runners. Last October he wrote an article about recovery time needed after races and between hard workouts. One of his charts recommends 4.5 days between hard workouts for someone in their 40s who’s in medium shape. Well, if I workout hard on Monday, that means my next hard workout would be Friday or Saturday. So am I supposed to run a hard tempo on Friday? But I like to do my long runs on Saturday. Do I push those to Sunday? What about the mid-week progression run? If I throw that in the mix, does it delay my recovery time? These are the types of questions I have rolling around in my head.

If I followed the Endless Season program exactly, I’d be doing an interval session, tempo and long run every week – along with the mid-week progression. I can already see the hole being dug. So right now I’m going to focus on getting in 3 workouts (i.e. intervals or tempos) every 2 weeks. With that in mind, I postponed my tempo run this week – moving it to next week.

I was thinking about Jessie Diggins some more and I really think some company should sign her to a long-term sponsorship deal ASAP. Think about it, she’s have a tremendous rookie season on the world cup, she’s attractive, speaks very well on camera and writes an entertaining blog. Oh yeah, and she’s only 19. That means she’ll be 21 at the next winter Olympics, then 25, and then 29. She will be around for awhile and could easily replace Lindsey Vonn as the face of the Olympic Games. I’m just saying – you heard it here first.

Quote of the Day;

“I’m psyched out of my mind on getting a photo finish with an Olympic Gold Medalist! I think I must have been in a lot of pain because I couldn’t stay standing at the finish but I was so excited I couldn’t feel a thing, which was just fine with me! I found out later than I had the fastest anchor leg over Kalla and Bjoergen, which I’m going to solidly blame on the fast skis. Thank you Salomon for Hooking. Me. Up. This. Year!” - Jessie Diggins