ANY IDIOT

I must have had turkey on the brain last week as I forgot to congratulate the Gopher harriers. The men placed 8th at nationals, which was their third best showing ever. The women, although disappointed with their 12th place at nationals, still had a great season.

Blogging continues to lead to some interesting offers. Mostly they’re of the review-our-stuff-for-free type of offers. First there was a book and then the sports drink. Right now I’m waiting on some headphones. Anyway, the other day I received a more local offer in a mass email. Now it doesn’t really bother me that my email address was right there for everyone else to see – maybe it should bother me more than it does. What I thought was interesting is that it included the email address of a well-known local Olympian. I think the company should figure out how to use the blind carbon copy feature of their email.

I suppose I should end with an update of my training during the holiday weekend. Thursday I got up early and ran 12 miles on the Valleywood Golf Course before hitting the road for the day. Since I took the day off from work on Friday, I thought I’d try a little experiment. I ran two easy 5 mile runs instead of a single 8 mile run. I wanted to see if I’d feel any noticeable difference on Saturday or Sunday.

I didn’t. I probably go back to the single workout for the time-being.

Saturday morning I joined my normal group for a 13-mile trek around Fort Snelling and Pike Island. Again, one of the things I’m trying to change this time around is a quicker run on Saturday, followed by a long run on Sunday. I wouldn’t call Saturday’s run super quick, but it was a lot faster than I run by myself; probably close to 7:15 pace. That run gave me 81 miles for the week on 8 runs.

Sunday morning I was able to bump my long run up another notch as I got in 18 miles. I probably drank about 12 ounces of water before the run and ate a banana. However, although I had a couple of gels with me, I didn’t eat or drink anything during the run. I felt good, but I think I was on fumes at the end of 2.5 hours of running. And while last week’s mileage was “only” 81 miles, this run gave me 87 miles over the last 7 days. I’ll try to get near that total this week before cutting back next week.

This morning was a very easy 8 miles. The Saturday/Sunday routine must be working because my legs were shot. I’ll try to hang in there for one more week, but that cutback week was on my brain today.

I really like today’s quote of the day. It’s definitely something I’m trying to keep in mind lately;

“Any idiot can train himself into the ground; the trick is working in training to get gradually stronger.” – Thomas Szasz