WHO'S WHO

Isn’t it great to be a blogger? We get to lay out all our training, goals, philosophies, strategies, hopes, desires, doubts, etc. out there for everyone to see. And then, on occasion, we get to have people we don’t know tell us what we did wrong.

It’s understandable.

Heck, I know I’m better at understanding other people’s training and desires than my own.

I bring this up partially because Mike got raked over the coals pretty good last week after “only” running 2:37 at his last marathon. I guess that’s the price for having a popular blog and not quite meeting your stated goal.

I also bring this up because after beating the high mileage horse into the ground here, I suddenly find myself x-c skiing at every opportunity. I guess my reasons are that;

1) it’s fun and I enjoy it
2) learning the technique involved provides a new challenge
3) we have snow this year, so I want to take advantage of it
4) skiing in zero degree temps doesn’t seem as bad as running in zero degree temps
5) while I might not run as well at Boston, hopefully, mixing in some skiing will allow me to maintain my motivation throughout the summer and lead to a PR at TCM
6) I won’t find out if #5 is true unless I try it
7) it helps that I already have four 20-24 milers under my belt already.

Here’s a quick training update. Thursday evening I ran 10 miles on the treadmill. Friday I ran 8 miles on the treadmill along with 3 miles at 6:24 pace. Saturday I skied for an hour. That gave me 58 miles on 5 runs and an additional 2 hours of skiing for the week. Sunday I skied for 90 minutes in the morning and ran 10 miles on the treadmill while watching the Packers choke. Monday I skied for 55 minutes. I would have loved to have skied this morning on our fresh snow, but I wanted to move into my hill phase. So ran 10 miles with 6 hill repeats.

Saturday was also the MDRA’s annual party. It was a regular who’s who of bloggers with Mike, Nathan, Kirk, Don, Ardis, and, of course, the MDRA’s own Colin all in attendance. Thanks to Wayne for the photo of me and Katie.

Quote of the day;

“When your mileage is 100-plus miles a week, some of those miles are not that tough. Sometimes I was just about jogging. When I reached that point, I did some of the miles on skis and enjoyed them more.” – Grete Waitz