I'M A TOTAL WUSS

At the tail-end of Saturday’s 20 miler, I bumped into a couple of the guys from the Saturday morning group I’ve been running with recently. A conversation I had with Naz lead to today’s post. As a refresher, Naz is the ONLY guy (or gal) who’s run ever Grandma’s and TCM. He’s also the guy who from 1974 to 1999 ran at least one sub 2:50 – each year. So far this has all been hearsay. I hadn’t spoken with him one-on-one, yet.

During his cool-down we get to talking about his ultra days. He said he did them for awhile but since everyone that he saw running them got slower, he stopped doing them. I’m thinking he did them for 2-3 years, maybe 5-6 races. It turns out he ran 50 of them! In the 1980s he ran 80 races that were either a marathon or longer. Umm, that’s 8 per year for 10 years! Heck if they were all evenly spaced, he’d be doing one every 6.5 weeks. And it’s not like this guy was “jogging.” We ran 3:08-3:15 for 50k. That’s 6:05-6:20 pace. Keep in mind during this period he was keeping his Grandma’s/TCM and sub-2:50 streaks alive.

So anyway, later in the conversation he asks me what I’m training for and I tell him Chicago. He asks me if I’m running this race, that race and the other race. I say something like “No, I have a 5 miler I’m doing the week after” or “No, it doesn’t fit into my training plan.” Later it hits me. He must think I’m a total wuss; “This guy can’t run a half marathon the weekend before a 5 miler? How the hell did he ever get into our training group?”

This whole conversation got me thinking about if we’re all just way too soft nowadays. And it’s not just me. Prior to the men’s race I bumped into my college buddy who dropped out of Grandma’s (after running 2:23 last year). He said he’s only got one more shot at trying to qualify for the Olympic marathon trials. Now I’ve run for 2:23, but I still had 5 miles to go when I did it…anyway I’m thinking “One more shot? The trials are like 14 months away. You could squeeze in 2 or 3 more marathons – if it meant a chance at the Oly Trials.” Hell, Naz would rattle off 9 or 10 marathons (or ultras) during that timeframe.

Seriously, I think we get too caught up in following things “by the book.” We’re too concerned with following “the plan,” not racing because we’re not ready or we don’t think we can recover, sticking to our heart rate zones, taking splits for every mile, making sure we have the right songs playing in our iPod, etc. So I say screw it. This Saturday I will do that half marathon that’s only 1 week before my alumni race. I may even get crazy and race it, as opposed to doing it at marathon pace, since I highly doubt that Naz and the gang ever ran a race at MP.

Oh yeah, yesterday I ran another 15 miles, 8 or 9 of which were with Evan.

Quote of the day;

“Run hard, be strong, think big!” – Percy Cerutty

2-FOR-2

It turns out I’m two-for-two when it comes to the last two races I wanted to run; twice I’ve waited till the day-of to register and twice I’ve found out there wasn’t any race-day registration. What’s up with that? Is this the new trend in road racing?

So instead of running a 10k on Saturday I decided to get in 20 miles while watching all 3 races. That run gave me 64 miles for the week on 6 runs – plus an hour of biking.

In the women’s race, Katie McGregor was 10 seconds off the Minnesota State record that she set last year, winning in 32:27. Marla Runyan was nearly a minute back in 33:18. The rest of the top-5 was Kristen Nicolini, Jenny Crain and Jenelle Deatherage. In the men’s race, Mathew Chesang won in 28:57, five seconds faster than Jason Lehmkuhle who ran the fastest time ever in Minnesota by a Minnesotan. Complete results can be found here.

Later that evening I’m checking my emails and there’s one from some Tracy I’ve never heard of with the subject “Was that you?” I almost deleted it without reading it. Luckily I took a closer look. It turns out Tracy lives in the area and she found my blog awhile ago, through Alison’s blog. Anyway, during her race, she recognized me from my profile picture (umm Tracy, you’re supposed to be focused and in the zone – not looking at all the “studs” running around). A huge congrats goes out to Tracy for PRing and breaking 40 for the first time. In the process she ran with some of the top local women and gained confidence for future races.

On another race note, congrats to coach Matt for his performances at Pike’s Peak marathon over the weekend. Matt was 51st overall in the ascent on Saturday in 3:01:44 and 31st overall in the marathon on Sunday in 4:57:53. That placed him 5th overall among “Doublers.” If you look at the doubler results you’ll see a guy from Spain in first and then 12 of the next 13 guys are from Colorado. The only flatlander in the mix is Matt. Also, congrats to teammates Erik and Moira. Erik ran the ascent in 3:47:44, shaving 20 minutes off of last year’s time, while Moira completed her first ascent in 4:04:27.

Quote of the day;

“If the coach cannot do it, he cannot ‘teach’ it – only talk about it.” – Percy Cerutty

POSSIBLE 10K

Man, was I tired yesterday. Katie waking me up at 1 AM and me not being able to fall back to sleep till 2 AM sure didn’t help. When I got up at 5 AM and couldn’t keep my eyes open I knew running in the morning was not going to happen. I laid down on the couch and slept another hour.

All this means is that I had to jump on the treadmill last night. I ran 8 miles with 4 of them at marathon pace. I’m thinking about running a 10K tomorrow, so I didn’t want to run too hard. This morning I ran a very easy 5 miles.

There are actually two 10Ks tomorrow – one for women and one for men. Somehow they get away with offering a lot more prize money to the women. If those numbers were reversed, I’m sure the women would be outraged. In any case, they get some decent women at this event. Last year Katie McGregor won in a Minnesota state record 32:17. Other runners included Colleen DeReuck, Sylvia Mosqueda, Nicole Aish, and other Team USA Minnesota members like Jenelle Deatherage, Carrie Tollefson, Sara Wells and Dana Coons, who’s no longer with the team. So whether I run the men’s 10K or not, I’ll be there to watch the women’s race.

The other day a friend sent me a “Getting to know your friends” email. It contained about 40 questions, 37 of which I don’t think any of my friends would really care about. Seriously, what kind of soap and shampoo do I use, what’s my favorite advertisement, have I cried in the last 24 hours, do I believe in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy or angels, etc.

Nothing too exciting, but one question did jump out at me; have you ever put a body on fire just for amusement?

Hmm, I suppose people would want to know that. Maybe that’s how they catch serial killers. They send out random surveys and slip in one question like “Have you ever killed anyone for sheer joy?” Then when they say “Yeah, back in the 1994…” their friends turn them in.

In honor of tomorrow’s all-women’s race here’s today’s quote of the day;

“They meant, of course, the first American man, so they should say so.” – Doris Brown Heritage, on hearing Craig Virgin described as “the first American” to win a World Cross Country title. She had won five.

SHOCK TO THE SYSTEM

Wow! I felt REALLY good last night. It's one of those things where you force yourself to take a day off (on Monday) and you beat yourself up for not “getting in your miles” and then the next day you have an awesome workout. Kind of makes me forget about that easy 5 miles that I didn’t run.

Last night I met my training group at Macalester College. After a 2 mile warm-up, we ran a 20 minute tempo on rolling hills followed by 2 more easy miles back to the track. Then we did 2 x 1 “mile” where I ended up running my 2 best times of the year, both 5:48. We ended with a 2 mile cool-down.

The most impressive thing to me about this workout is that I only had 1:47 rest in-between the miles. The last few times we’ve done this workout we were supposed to have a 2:00 rest, but we were really taking a 3:00-3:30 rest. So basically cutting the rest in half was a huge shock to the system.

The other good news is my knee felt fine during the run and it feels good today.

While it does feel great to bounce right back after a day off and have a great workout, I still believe it’s more important to run tired. You can’t be cutting back before every hard workout and expect to maximize your training. But as Chicago gets closer and closer I find myself focused on getting in some solid workouts followed by nice easy recovery days.

Alright I have to mention this before I forget. I admit I don’t know anything about ChiRunning, but I’m skeptical. A week-and-a-half ago there was an article about a local runner who is the only “certified ChiRunning instructor in Minnesota.” This guy is 47 now, but back “in the day” he was 2:24 marathoner.

“He achieved success using traditional approaches to running, like logging 100-mile weeks. But he also knew the pain of injuries: stress fractures, torn cartilage in the knee, plantar fasciitis.”

So am I supposed to assume now that he’s a ChiRunner he’ll be able to log 100-mile weeks PAIN FREE? Or does it mean that in order to be pain free he has to run FEWER MILES? Or is this just a way for him to cash in by holding ChiRunning clinics?

There was a part of the article that tried to describe ChiRunning saying something like “your foot lands underneath you and you’re landing on your mid-foot.” Sure that sounds great, but right next to it was a picture of the only “certified ChiRunning instructor in Minnesota” and he was CLEARLY over-striding and landing on his heel.

One last thing I have to get off my chest and hopefully spread the word. If you receive any of those chain emails with stuff like cookie recipes, don’t dial this area code, boycott gas stations on this date, etc. Go to a site like Hoax Busters or Snopes and find out if it’s “real” or not before forwarding it to your entire list of contacts (or at least me).

Quote of the day;

“If you have not figured it out by now, I include a LOT of stairs training, so you are not too tired to step-up on the podium after the race.” – coach Matt

NEW ONE

Here's a new one. Yesterday I was just about to pull into the parking garage and head out for my run when I noticed that I didn’t grab my shirt and slacks. I hang them near the doorway and grab them on my way to the car. I had to drive back and get them and wasn't able to get in my run. After two consecutive strong 15 milers, I wasn’t too heartbroken.

Instead of getting my run in last night, I decided to hop on my bike (and trainer) for an hour. I figured with my knee acting up, I’d be better off with a little cross training.

My knee hasn’t been too bad, but I do feel it when I run. The problem is I only feel it when I run. By the time I get home from work, I’ve forgotten about it and therefore, forgotten about icing it. I did remember to ice it 4 times over the weekend, so hopefully that, combined with the biking will be enough to help it recover.

I have a couple of other things that I want to talk about, but I spent the lunch hour setting up my fantasy football league, so those other topics will have to wait.

Quote of the day;

“The wreath or death!” – A common oath of ancient Olympians

WHO'S WHO?

I suppose I should throw in a little training update. I’ve been a regular social butterfly lately. Thursday I met with Scott for a strong 8 miles. Friday I ran a very easy 11 by myself. Saturday I ran 15 with the Saturday morning Masters group. That gave me 62 miles for the week on 6 runs. Sunday I ran 15 with Jenna.

I’ve mentioned before that Minnesota has a Running Data Center that does a phenomenal job at keeping track of all the road running records since 1986. Each year the put together a yearbook that highlights things like the top runners in each age-group during the year, the best times during the year, all-time records, etc. Last year was the 20 edition, so it contained more historical information that normal. If you’re a fan of the sport like I am, it’s a great source of information to see who came before you.

Unfortunately, many of the races pre-1986 were not certified, therefore they don’t count. As a result, there are no records for guys like Buddy Edelen and Ron Daws and only a few records for Garry Bjorklund, Dick Beardsley, etc.

Anyway, the reason I bring this up is because this Saturday morning Masters group that I just started running with is made up of guys that were absolute studs – and still are. After a little digging through the yearbook and running with the group, here’s what I found;

Bruce was named the Best Runner in Minnesota over the past 20 years for BOTH the 40-44 and 45-49 age groups. Between the ages of 41 and 44 he ran 4 marathons between 2:22 and 2:26 (wava 90%+). At 44 he ran 31:24 for 10k (wava 93.3%). He’s now 62 and complains because he “only” runs 40 mpw.

Doug was named the Best Runner in Minnesota over the past 20 years for the 35-39 age group.

John is the only person to run all 30 Grandma’s marathons AND all 25 Twin Cities marathons. I thought that was impressive until I heard he also ran sub-2:50 for 25 or 26 CONSECUTIVE years.

I get the sense these guys have been running together for like 25-30 years. Tim said he used to come in last at every Saturday morning run – and he was a 2:25 marathoner.

Hell, Jenna, who just qualified for the Olympic Marathon Trials is practically the worst person I ran with over the weekend – and that’s no disrespect to her. Of course, all those guys are blogging about Zeke being the worst person they ran with over the weekend.

I just hope some of their talent rubs off on me.

Speaking of Masters runners, I just came across this on letsrun.com. It was written by a very fast 45 year old in California...

Perhaps we should review a few rules of masters competition:

1) None of us is as good as we used to be. Masters is a competition of who gets slower slowest, an understanding that should keep all of us humble.

2) The competition ends when the race is over, and the camaradery begins (again!).

3) We root for one another - always! - because we recognize that without our peers we have no sport.

4) Having been through open competition, we recognize that "winning" is a momentary, fleeting accomplishment - that it won't bring any lasting happiness the way family, career, and friends will - but that staying healthy and competing with like-minded people in the sport that we love will make our days much better.

5) Winners shouldn't gloat - ever. We're always one step away from a hamstring pull, plantar fascitis, or some wicked sprain/strain that we never even knew existed until we turned 40. We spend 4 out of every 5 years getting older and slower while new "young" blood spills into our age division. And, most importantly, it's disrespectful of the effort every one of us old fogies has to make just to be here.

6) Finally, our fellow masters athletes are some of the best people I know. Why would any of us want to do anything other than make our peers feel as great about themselves as we want to feel about ourselves.

SURVEY COMMENTS

Normally I just respond to comments with another comment, but the recent discussion probably warrants a follow-up post.

First off, good points everyone, interesting discussion. I agree that the “line” is curved and shows diminishing returns over time. However, I think, due to the lack of higher mileage samples, this particular graph levels off too quickly. If I threw in results for high-mileage guys like Duncan, Evan and Mike, the graph would probably extend a little higher before leveling off.

As they say, this sport is an experiment of one. Punch in your data and see what happens. You may be surprised.

I agree with Yvonne that there’s a lack of discussion regarding the mental aspect of our sport. However, I doubt that comes into play much on this graph. If someone’s not doing mental toughness exercises at 30 mpw, they’re probably not doing them at 70 mpw. Even if they added them to the mix, it would only shift their data points up a bit. For example, a 1% increase in wava % is roughly 2.5 minutes for me in a marathon. Is the mental aspect going to gain me more that that? I doubt it.

Talking about “time since couch potato”, I'm not saying everyone needs to jump from 30 mpw to 70 mpw. I've always suggested that people need to push themselves a little more - gradually over time – rather than limit themselves to X mpw.

One thing the graph doesn't show is someone running 30 mpw and running an 80% wava. It doesn't matter if they've been running 12 months or 12 years. That mileage WILL NOT cut it when it comes to “competitive” running.

One of the reasons I came up with this topic is because I kept seeing comments on other blogs like;

“Wow, 46 miles this week is a lot.”

Umm, no it’s really not. Not if you want to get to Boston.

“Oh, you’re doing fine at Y mpw. Don’t listen to what everyone else says.”

I think the reason people say stuff like this is because THEY don’t want to put in the work themselves and they don’t want to see you improve either.

“So and so ran 3:10 on Z mpw.”

How do you know that person wouldn’t run 2:50 on more miles?

At the end of it all, this was just a visual exercise to show that as mileage goes up race times go down. Maybe it’ll get some people to take action and change their training. Maybe not.

Quote of the day;

“What else would you want in a marathon? Grandma’s Marathon starts in the middle of the woods, runs along the beautiful shores of Lake Superior, and finishes at a pub.” – Garry Bjorklund

SURVEY (AGAIN)

I posted my survey (yes, this is the last you'll hear of it) on hillrunner.com and added some more data points. Getting data from a bunch of different people has been cool. You can "see" a steady line of increasing performance up till about 60-70 mpw then the line begins to flatten out. Maybe that's how it really works or maybe I just don't have enough data points from people running over 70 mpw.

One thing that stands out to me, you don't see any wava % of less than 60% for anyone running more than 50 mpw. For those of you that have no idea what a 60% wava means, here's an example: A 35 year old female with a wava of 60% would run a 3:51 marathon. A 40 year old man would run 3:35.











In any case, what's even more interesting is getting various points from 1 person and seeing them go from 58 wava on 45 mpw to 68 wava on 80 mpw. Some of this data is very linear. I need to dig out some old logs to see how this applies to my training/racing.

SURVEY RESULTS

Man, I wish I would have paid attention in some of those statistics classes I took in college. Then maybe I’d be able to make better sense of the survey I posted about 2 weeks ago. I could rattle off a bunch of R-factors, coefficients, standard deviations and bell-shaped curve lingo. I could speak to mean, median and mode. I’d throw out Nth this and Nth that, hypothesis here, null hypothesis there. You’d all be on the edge of your seat and by the end of the post you’d say “Damn, I gotta get out and run more miles. Thanks Zeke!”







But all I have is this scatter plot. I converted everyone’s time, distance, sex and age into an age-graded % using this calculator and plotted that against their average miles per week. Hopefully it’s enough to get you to say “Damn, I gotta get out and run more miles. Thanks Zeke!”

A few things to note: 1) running a 3:22 marathon on 20 miles per week IS NOT normal and 2) many of the respondents are triathletes. Therefore their mileage may appear “low” but keep in mind they are also biking and swimming.

In any case, even with the relatively low number of responders, I think the graph shows a strong correlation between increased weekly mileage and increased wava percents (i.e. lower race times). So get out and run more.

I had a Boston Marathon shirt on at work last Friday and a gal asked what place I came in. I really had no idea. After visiting marathon guide I knew the answers;

In 2002 I was 1,396th of 14,400 runners.
In 2004 I was 4,302nd of 16,743 runners.

She responded with “Wow! You beat A LOT of people.” However, I was thinking “Man, a lot of people beat me.” I guess we have different perspectives.

Just an easy 7 mile recovery run today.

Quote of the day;

“The marathon, you see, is my benchmark. It is the status symbol in my community, the running community.” – Dr. George Sheehan

HIGH PRAISE

It's been 4 days since my last post, so this will mainly be a boring training update.

I’ve run over 50 miles on some great trails since that last post. Friday morning I got in 11 miles before work. I finally decided to get off the paved trails near my office and hit the dirt/wood chip trails. The black flies seemed to have settled down and a little bug spray is enough to get me through the run.

During my feeble attempts to get a new training group started, I was invited to join a group that meets every Saturday morning at various spots throughout the metro area. This week they happened to be meeting a mile from my house, so I couldn’t pass it up. Some of these guys were driving 30-40 miles to get to, as they put it, “the best trails in the metro area.” Given that these trails are in my backyard, it’s cool to hear such high praise.

These guys are all great runners too. Every year they are near the top of their age-groups for the Runner of the Year rankings. Even though they are all older than 45, they were still kicking my ass all over the trail. But that’s alright. I managed to run a total of 19 miles, which is my longest training run so far this time around. This run gave me 81 miles for the week.

It’s probably no surprise that something is bothering me, given how quickly I’ve ramped up my mileage. My right knee has been feeling a little sore for about a week now. So that, combined with having family in town for the weekend, I decided to take Sunday off.

Yesterday I took the day off of work and went swimming with the girls. Prior to that, I got in 10 miles of progressively faster running. I ran 3 times Jensen Lake, which is about 2.2 mile around in 16:22, 15:53 and 15:05. My legs really bounced back from the day off and felt nice and springy.

That springy feeling carried over to today’s 11 mile trail run too. While I didn’t run as hard as yesterday, I did run stronger than normal. I figure I might as well roll with it while it’s there. Tomorrow will probably be another story.

Lately I’ve been thinking about how to approach my Chicago training. Should I try to build up to 100 mpw again and really go for it? Should I not worry about mileage and focus on key workouts instead? Should I do whatever it takes to stay healthy (whatever that means)? Of course I’d like to “go for it” but having missed my last marathon due to an injury, I also want to make it to the starting line.

I emailed my thoughts to Evan last week and I thought I’d get a two sentence response. Instead, I got a response that basically turned into this post for him.

I’ve only known Evan for a short time, but I respect his opinions on training. I don’t think I’ve ever run with someone who has such a strong sense of what certain training stimuli, whether it’s mileage or specific workouts, etc. will do for his fitness.

With all that said, I’ve decided to skip my Tuesday night group track workouts for a few weeks. Instead, I’ll focus on getting around 80 mpw on singles with some strong efforts, recovery days and long runs mixed in.

Quote of the day;

“The only wall Benoit ever hit was the outfield fence with a double in the gap at the Bowdoin alumni day softball game.” – Amby Burfoot, on Joan Benoit Samuelson

FOR THE TRIATHLETE IN YOU

I had a bunch of thoughts I was going to post today, along with some links, but all that pales in comparison to what follows. Rather than clutter up this post with a bunch of other garbage, I’ll keep it simple.

When it comes to Ironman, if you;

* are currently training for one
* have completed one in the past
* have ever wondered about what it’s like on race day
* have just watched it on TV

check out this first-timers race recap from IM Lake Placid.

Today’s quote of the day comes from the recap;

“To borrow the words of E.L. Doctorow, racing an Ironman is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but somehow you can make the whole trip that way.”

ORIGINAL "THAT GUY" LINK

Here’s the original “that guy” article.

"THAT GUY"

I wish I could take credit for this post. Yes, I wrote it but the original idea came from an article I read awhile ago. I think it may have been about 3 years ago - back in my triathlon days. I should have printed the article and put it in my fruitcake folder, but I didn’t.

Anyway, the article was about “that guy” (or gal). He could live in your town, go to the same church, work at the same place, etc. You know who I’m talking about. That guy that’s faster than you, stronger than you, fitter than you, etc.

You envy him. You want to be like him. You want to beat him.

It’s no secret that running is a competitive sport where the results are very black and white. It’s easy to see who “won” on any given day. We train hard. We write each run down in a log-book. We track miles and time. We spend time thinking about improving ourselves and moving up in the standings. And we dream about beating “that guy.”

A lot of time and energy is put into beating “that guy.”

However, do we ever stop to think that we are “that guy”?

To someone else, we are “that guy”. We are the guy they wish they could be like. They wish they were as strong as you, as fast as you, as fit as you (and, of course, as handsome, hot and sexy as you – I had to throw that in). They train in order to be like you and to beat you.

And this isn’t just limited to other runners. People at work or school or church would love to be as fit as you. They'd love to be able to do the things you do. The gal at the coffee shop says “You’re crazy. I could never do that.” But deep down she’s thinking, “Why the hell don’t I do something like that?”

I use a lot of bandwidth telling people to step up to the plate, bump their mileage, shake up their training, push their limits and find out how good they can be. Today I’m saying, take some time to enjoy your accomplishments and realize that you are “that guy”.

This morning I ran with “that guy” Scott for a 50-minute loop around Lake Harriet. Throw in another mile with the dog and I’ll call it (a short) 8 for the morning.

Today’s quote of the day goes very well with my post from the other day describing what it feels like to be a first-time marathoner building up your long run.

“When I did this three years ago, it was like death. When I did it last year, it was like near death. This year, it was just really hard.” – John Howie, wheelchair racer

CASE-IN-POINT

While the temperature only got to 75 or 76 yesterday, the dew point was still soupy at 72. And I can’t remember the last time it rained here. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was back in April. It’s been super dry all summer-long. Well that all changed last night. It was raining at the start of our group’s run, but the sky really opened up as we were finishing our last hill repeat. It continued to pour during the first of three one-mile repeats. Standing water on the track and 20-25 mph winds on the back-straight definitely slowed times from last week, as I only managed 6:19, 6:24, 6:19. All told, I got in 12 miles last night, along with 6 in the morning. So August is off to a good start. I’m on-pace for 558 miles this month.

Wait. I ran an easy 5 this morning, so I’m only on-pace for 356 miles.

During last night’s run I was talking with a guy who’s a perfect case-in-point for my post yesterday. He’s not a first-time marathoner, but I think he has an aggressive goal, compared to his training. He wants to drop his PR by 8 minutes and qualify for Boston with a 3:10 at TCM. Given that he’s running circles around me on the hills and track, you’d think it wouldn’t be a problem. However, a red flag went up last night when he said, “I’m not worried about the miles. I’ve run 11 miles so far.” I’m thinking, “Chicago is 3 weeks after TCM and I feel like a slacker for only running 17 miles so far.”

While I hope he reaches his goal, I just don’t see it happening unless he steps up his training – starting like tomorrow.

Now they’re saying Landis’s tests show synthetic testosterone. Greg LeMond is urging Landis to tell the truth. Thanks to Eric (the non-blogger) for the links.

I’m to the point where I think they're all dirty. I've come to the conclusion that anyone faster than me is dirty. Alright, maybe it's not that drastic, but anyone who makes a living at sports is on “something”.

My question for LeMond is “How do we know you were clean”? Maybe you just were never caught and now you know you don’t have any samples "on ice" that could be tested with new technology.

Hell, if the first riders of the tour were taking amphetamines, why should we assume drug use has ever stopped?

On this topic, here’s a “fun” video.

Today’s quote of the day comes from a letsrun.com post, so I cannot vouch for it’s accuracy.

“Miles are miles and work is work, the time of day means nothing.” – Mark Nenow, former American Record holder at 10K who was known for running late at night.

TODAY'S ADVICE

First off today, I have exactly 3 more years until I become a master.

Where did July go? Seems like just the other day I mentioned that I wanted to run in the upper-200s for mileage. With last night’s easy 5 miles, I managed 291 miles for the month. That’s a PR for the month of July, by 25 miles. I ran 30 of the 31 days and doubled up 4 times. While I’m happy with July, especially considering I “lost” May and June to injury, I’m hoping for better numbers in August.

During this morning’s easy 6 mile run, I was thinking back to my first marathon. I thought I’d post what not to do, for all the other first-time marathoners out there. In 1996 I was just coming off my senior year of college track, so I was in pretty good shape at the beginning of the summer – probably 17:00-17:30 5k shape. In June I ran just over 1:20 for a half marathon. Then my training or lack there of, took over. Being a new college graduate and looking for a job, living with my future in-laws and not “having” to prepare for cross country had a major (negative) impact on my training.

By the time race day rolled around, 17 miles was the upper limits of my long run, which I ran once. To compound my lack of training even further, I went out too hard. I can’t remember the splits off the top of my head, but I know “we” (yes, you know who you are) were running sub-7 pace through 8 miles before I decided to back off. At halfway I must have been around 1:32. I continued to run, albeit slower, until mile 20 or 21. Everything after that is a blur of walking and jogging. I survived to finish in just over 3:20. Not terrible, but given where I was at in June, I could have broken 2:50 with proper training.

One of the reasons I bring this up is that there are some first-timer blogs out there. They seem to be in really good 5k shape, but may or may not be prepared for 26.2 miles. Sure they may be following a decent plan; whether it’s a beginner, intermediate, or advanced plan doesn’t really matter. What matters is that their goal matches the plan. There’s nothing wrong with following a beginner’s plan, but you can’t expect to run an aggressive goal off that kind of plan.

The one thing I remember about training for my first 2-3 marathons is how hard it is to build up your long runs. Now that I’ve done a bunch of marathons (and long runs), running 20 miles is not a big deal. But the first time I went from 13 to 15 to 17; it was tough.

Back in 1996, I didn’t have access to a bunch of other marathoners and their thoughts. But with blogging, we’re able to read what others are going through. That can be good and bad. It can help motivate us, but it can also lead to unrealistic comparisons. Just because you have a similar 5K PR to someone doesn’t guarantee that your first marathon time will be similar to their marathon PR.

So today’s advice is as follows; if you you’re running one of the many fall marathons out there and it’ll be your first one, make sure your goal matches your training.

Quote of the day;

“Everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it.” - Mark Twain

MURPHY'S LAW

I started a long post that described everything that went wrong on Saturday, but it sounded too much like pissing and moaning, so I deleted it. Let’s just say I was hoping to get in about 15 miles, but only managed 6. I was also hoping to get 70-75 miles for the week, but this slip means I only ran 62 miles. It also means there’s no way I’ll reach 300 for the month now. Oh well...

Rather than worry about the training I missed, I chalked it up as an easy day. And what’s better after 2 easy days than “hammering?” I didn’t dare venture outside on Sunday as the heat index reached 108. Instead, I jumped on the treadmill just as the Twins were taking on the Tigers. I spent the first 9 miles progressing from 8:50 to 6:40 pace and then I backed off for a mile before dropping back to 6:40 pace for 3 more miles. A 2-mile cool-down gave me 15 for the day.

Believe it or not, I even strapped on a HRM for this workout. I wanted to see what kind of pace I could run with my heart rate in the 170-175 range. I was able to run 6:40 pace while keeping my HR around 172-173.

Hmm, when you eliminate all the pissing and moaning, this turns into a rather short post. I better think of some other stuff.

How’d you like to be Bernard Legat? You train your ass off, for what? To PR in the 5,000 by .07 seconds. Anyway, congrats on his 12:59.22 victory over Kenenisa Bekele. I won't get into the whole 'is he an American' or 'is he juiced' debates. There's enough of that on letsrun.com.

Congrats to Minnesotan Carrie Tollefson for setting an 8 second PR in the 3,000 with an 8:44.63. Also, congrats to my teammates who braved Sunday’s heat, humidity and wind during a local half iron-distance event. While I was curled up in the fetal position around our AC, these guys were swimming, biking and running for over 5 hours. Seriously, it makes runners who bitch (and I'm at the top of the list) about 70 degrees seem like a bunch of pansies.

Finally, don’t forget to take the survey I posted on Friday.

Quote of the day;

“Just remember this: No one ever won the olive wreath with an impressive training diary.” – Marty Liquori

SURVEY

Awhile ago I mentioned that I had this desire to stand at the finish line of a race and give the runners a quick survey. The idea being that there’s a correlation between mileage and where people finish in the pack. Obviously, there are other factors involved. Heck, even with “mileage,” am I talking about life-to-date mileage, last year’s mileage, last 3 months mileage, average mileage, peak mileage, etc.?

While I’m not going to perform this survey at a race, I thought I’d try to perform it on the web. I want to try to get as many comments or emails from you guys that answer a few easy questions surrounding your PRs;

Age
Sex
Average Mileage*
Peak Mileage
Distance
Time

*How many miles per week did you average during the heart of your training, excluding the taper? In my examples below I used 12 weeks.

Ideally I’m interested in the marathon, but I realize not everyone has run a marathon. That’s fine, send me what you have. It doesn’t matter if you run 20 mpw or 120 mpw, or if your PR is 2:05 or 6:05. The wider the variety, the more interesting the results will be.

SLEEP IS GOOD

Being a terrible hot weather runner is one of the reasons I was so intrigued by glycerin loading which was discussed in the New York Times article that I posted yesterday. The author received some questions on the article and his answers are posted here. Thanks to Eric for pointing this out. Some further (confusing) discussion of glycerin loading can be found here.

Obviously there’s been lots of focus on Floyd Landis during the last 24 hours. I don’t pretend to understand it all, but I agree with Eric’s comments; 1) why are they leaking results of tests before they are conclusive and 2) there are better drugs out there than testosterone.

Speaking of performance enhancing drugs, have you ever wondered what effect they’d have on you? Well now you can find out (sort of) in this very interesting article from Outside magazine in 2003. It’s rather long, but it’s Friday and your boss is gone – so go ahead and check it out.

Yesterday I ran to the local running store over lunch. I was just going to pick up the regional running magazines, which they give away. Damn if I didn’t leave with another pair of shoes. I already have a pair sitting in my closet that I have worn yet. But these news shoes are one of my favorites (this is my 4th pair), the New Balance 833. They’ve been discontinue and I was able to get them for $59. I couldn’t pass that up.

In the spirit of making my hard days, hard and my easy days, easy, I jumped on the treadmill last night for 5 more very easy miles. That gave me 19 for the day. I knew I’d be tired this morning, so I didn’t bother setting my alarm. That means I’ll have to get my run in tonight. I hate having that “looming” over me, but sleep is good.

Quote of the day;

“A teacher is never to smart to learn from his pupils. But while runners differ, basic principles never change. So it’s a matter of fitting your current practices to fit the event and the individual. See, what’s good for you might not be worth a darn for the next guy.” – Bill Bowerman

"SUB-PAR" WORKOUT

Last night I ran a very easy 5 miles. During the run I came up on a gal running while her husband was riding his bike. This guy and I start talking and it turns out we “know” each other. We’ve never met, but we exchanged emails about 3 years ago. He was in charge of a south-metro running club and I was looking for people to run with. Most of his group was 3:30 marathoners and I was shooting for sub-3, so we never hooked up. Anyway, he said he trains with a bunch of 3-hour guys on Thursdays and that he’d add my name to their email list. I got an email from them this morning and I was a little confused by the workout;

SPEED: 8-10 miles including 2 x 2 mile tempos on soft surface to promote VO2 max.

Is it just me or is the use of “tempos” and “VO2 max” contradictory?

Speaking of contradictory, anyone get this active.com article regarding “the best running workout you’ve never done?” While Lydiard probably never referred to vVO2max, I believe his 30/30 workout is very similar to the “highly unorthodox” workout described in this article.

As I was heading to my car after this morning’s workout I noticed the vanity plates on the car next to mine; UNDRPAR. Obviously, the car belongs to a golfer. I thought, runners use the term “sub” all the time; sub-3, sub-18, sub-40, etc. How come golfers don’t? Then I realized UNDRPAR would become SUBPAR, which probably isn’t the message this guy/gal wanted to send. When it comes to golf, it’d be more like UNDRDBLBGY (under double boogey) for me.

Anyway, I had a “sub-par” workout this morning, but in the good way. It consisted of a 2 mile warm-up, 3 x 3 miles at marathon pace (MP) w/ ½ mile jog in-between, and a 2 mile cool-down. I ended up running the 3 repeats in 20:43, 21:03 and 20:44. I lost concentration a little on the second rep. While I don’t need laser-like focus to run MP, I do need to remind myself to pick the pace back up, after heading up a hill.

While I hope to run Chicago about 20 seconds per mile faster than today’s pace, I’ll take this workout because;

1) This was my first MP workout in along time.
2) Chicago is not today and I try to run these workouts based on the shape I’m in now, not where I want to be in 3 months.
3) I don’t think it’ll be 72 degrees with a dew point of 68 at Chicago.
4) Chicago doesn’t start at 5:45 AM.
5) This was my 3rd hard workout in 6 days.

All told, I ran 14 miles in about 1:45 and was done by 7:15 AM. Sweet.

Dang, this is getting to be a long post, but after giving a shout out to Tegenkamp’s 5k, it’s only right to praise the U.S. women who ran the 10k at Helsinki. Below are the results of the meet, followed by the U.S. all-time list. Congrats to Kara Goucher, who, yes, is a Minnesota native. While Katie McGregor did not PR (missing by 11 seconds), she appears to be running A LOT better than she was earlier this spring. Being the president of her fan club (in addition to Elizabeth Yetzer’s), that’s nice to see. Hmm, maybe the Kara Goucher fan club needs a president too.

Helsinki 10,000 METERS
1 2 Kayoko Fukushi Japan 31:00.64
2 1 Benita Johnson Australia 31:14.80
3 15 Kara Goucher USA 31:17.12 ****PR
4 7 Jen Rhines USA 31:24.16 ****PR
5 6 Katie McGregor USA 31:32.17
6 11 Sylvia Kibet Kenya 31:39.34
7 4 Lucy Wangui Kenya 31:48.68
8 10 Sara Slattery USA 31:57.94 ***** PR
9 13 Victoria Jackson USA 32:59.32
10 12 Samia Akbar USA 33:30.84

All-time U.S. 10,000 METERS
30:50.32 DeenaDrossin 2002
31.17.12 Kara Goucher 2006 *****
31:18.96 Amy Rudolph 2005
31:19.89 Lynn Jennings 1992
31:21.20 Katie McGregor 2005
31:21.92 Elva Dryer 2005
31.24.16 Jen Rhines 2006****
31:28.92 Francie Larrieu Smith 1991
31:30.89 Annette Peters 1997
31:34.37 Kate O'Neill 2004
31:35.25 Blake Russell 2005
31:35.3 Mary Slaney 1982
31:37.26 Anne Marie Lauck 1993
31:38.04 Judi St. Hilaire 1992
31:41.33 Libbie Hickman 1999

Quote of the day;

“I don’t know about psychology; I’m a runner.” – Steve Jones, when asked about his thought process after breaking the world record in the marathon in 1984.

LINKY LINKY

Damn, lots going on today. I’m going to have to publish two posts today. This one contains a bunch of interesting articles and a couple of videos. Later today I’ll post my “sub-par” workout for this morning.

I just finished posting a comment, in response to Thomas, that I thought all elite athletes were probably dirty, when I got an email telling me Floyd Landis tested positive for high levels of testosterone. Thanks for the heads-up, Dale.

Bear forwarded me another interesting New York Times article. I know a lot of times you have to register to read their stuff. Here’s a sample from the article;

…runners should not use lotions, including sun block, because they add a barrier to the evaporation of sweat. He said that while it seemed logical to drink as much water as possible before the race — and runners try it — “it doesn’t work.” The reason, he explained, is that drinking a lot of water increases blood volume and the body responds by getting rid of it, in urine.

“What you need to do is to increase your total body fluids another way,” Dr. Martin said.

Check out the article to learn more.

Yesterday Bob posted an article and video on Dick and Rick Hoyt. Whenever I hear their names, I think back to the triathlete who gave a motivational speech at our wellness week last year. Click on the video at this site to hear how the Hoyt’s inspired Tony Schiller.

Ever been injured and/or in a relationship? If so, check out Mario's take on how injuries are like relationships.

Finally, Scott sent me this video that’ll get you fired up for the Chicago Marathon or any other race.

TORN

First off, she’s not reading this but I want to wish Katie a happy 3rd birthday!!! Of course I love both my girls to death, but there’s something about Katie that resonates with me. It seems like her personality is more similar to mine than Kinsey’s. Maybe it’s because we’re both 2nd born.

I’m torn. I grew up in Wisconsin and now live in Minnesota. Being bordering states, there can be quite a rivalry at times; Packers/Vikings, Badgers/Gophers, Leinie’s/Grain Belt, etc.

While I try to stick with my current Minnesotan roots, sometimes it’s hard not to cheer for both sides. So when former Badger Matt Tegenkamp ran 13:04.90 for 5K yesterday, I couldn’t help but get excited. When you’re already running 13:25 and you’re able to drop your PR by 21 seconds over the course of the season, it’s pretty amazing. Tegenkamp’s post-race thoughts can be found here.

Yesterday’s race moves him into 4th on the all-time U.S. list;

5000 METERS
12:58.21 Bob Kennedy 1996
12:59.29 Bernard Lagat 2005
13:01.15 Sydney Maree 1985
13:04.90 Matt Tegenkamp 2006
13:10.00 Adam Goucher 2006
13:10.86 Alan Webb 2005
13:11.77 Tim Broe 2005
13:11.77 Meb Keflezighi 2000
13:11.93 Alberto Salazar 1982
13:12.91 Matt Centrowitz 1982
13:13.32 Abdi Abdirahman 2005
13:13.49 Bruce Bickford 1985
13:14.80 Bill McChesney 1982
13:15.06 Marty Liquori 1977
13:15.33 Ian Dobson 2005
13:15.44 Doug Padilla 1985
13:16.02 Dan Browne 2004
13:16.03 Ryan Hall 2005
13:16.61 Dathan Ritzenhein 2006
13:18.50 Nick Rogers 2000

Teg’s run must have inspired me because I had a great group workout last night. It was fairly similar to last week’s workout; 25 minutes of hill repeats and 3 x 1 “mile” repeats. We did change the hill portion up a little, so instead of doing 3 hills in 25 minutes, we ran 2 longer hills.

I will admit I took it a little easier on the hills this week, but not much. Last week my “mile” repeats averaged 6:07. This week’s weather was warmer, yet I still ran 6:04, 5:59, 5:59. Again, I felt controlled the whole time. I kept telling myself to back-off and just run relaxed and I still kept hitting 90 seconds per lap. It was, by far, the best I’ve felt since before my injury.

Speaking of which, I gave a quick update in a comment the other day, but I thought I’d post something here too. My leg is feeling fine. It’s not bothering me at all. I’ve put that injury behind me and am on to my next one. It’s amazing how much time slows down when you’re injured and you think you’re never going to get healthy. But you do eventually heal and before you know it you’re training as if nothing ever happened.

Quote of the day;

“I realized that I didn't come here to puss out and not give a real effort, so I made the decision that no matter what the pace was, I was not letting the lead pace get away from me.” – Matt Tegenkamp

TAGGED

Yesterday was an easy day between workout days. I took advantage of not “having” to run in the morning and biked around Hyland Park. I used my odometer and spray painted an “X” every half mile. From now on, any time I run in the park I’ll be able to blog about every half-mile split, down to the 100th of a second. Stay tuned…

In the evening I jumped on the treadmill for an easy 5 miles at 8:30 pace. Actually, I started around 9:30 pace and dropped down to 8:00 pace at the end. Meanwhile, I was watching the Twins play long-ball against the hated White Sox. We’re still hot and have moved to within 2 games of the Wild Card spot. I know you’re all curious about Joe Mauer, since I mentioned him recently. He’s cooled off a little lately and is “only” hitting .380.

Alright, I’ve been tagged by Run Faster Master and I thought I’d play along.

4 Jobs I have had
* Janitor at a nursing home
* Stock boy at a grocery store – 10 PM to 6 AM
* Like Running Rabbit, one summer I was a “nanny” for 3 boys – taking them to the pool, the country club, their practices, and playing video games with them. I was supposed to have them study a little bit every day. Yeah, like that happened.
* Between getting out of the navy and college starting, I was on unemployment. One of the conditions was you had to be actively looking for work. Another was you had to accept the work that came along. I spent 1 week digging an 18” hole around existing telephone poles and wrapping them with a chemically treated paper to help them from rotting. It was hot, sticky, buggy, manual labor through thick forest at times. I remember the foreman telling me I could be a foreman too some day. I guess I never lived up to my potential.

4 Movies I watch over and over
* Good Will Hunting
* The Usual Suspects
* Tombstone
* Beautiful Mind

4 Places I have lived
* Turkey
* Japan
* Joliet, IL
* Ashland, WI

4 Television Shows I watch
* CSI – the original
* Survivor
* Criminal Minds
* How I Met Your Mother

4 Places I have been on vacation
* Portland, OR (Mt. St. Helens, Astoria, Coos Bay, Eugene-loop)
* Seattle
* New York City
* Door County, WI

4 Websites I visit everyday
* Google Reader (my bloglines)
* Simon Says…Run
* Hillrunner.com
* Race results (like onlineraceresults.com, raceberryjam.com, etc)

4 Favorite Foods
* Pasta, pasta, pasta
* Pizza
* Cereal
* Sandwiches

4 Favorite Bands/Music
* Neil Young
* Wilco
* Led Zeppelin
* Minnesota Bands (Jayhawks, Soul Asylum, Gear Daddies, Replacements, Tina and the B-sides, Twin City Playboys, etc.)

I’ll tag Duncan, Kevin Beck, Scott Douglas and Kilgore (insert big-tooth-eyes-closed-laughing emoticon here).

Quote of the day – Poor Lasse, I assume he didn’t have an iPod, GPS, HRM, email, x-box, etc. either;

“No TV, no radio, no newspapers, not even a decent road; but I do not need any of them. Electic light we got here only last year.” – Lasse Viren on his training cabin in Lapland

ABSOLUT NUDITY

WHO KNEW?

I just realized that I never mentioned my training in Friday’s post. I ran a moderately paced 6 miles before work. Saturday I met Evan at the trails near my house for a nice, relatively bug-free, 2 hour run. Those 15 miles gave me 64 for the week. I plan on extended my cutback “week” through Tuesday or Wednesday, probably dropping into the 50-55 mile range before ramping back up.

Meanwhile, other members of my training group were running Lumberjack Days. Jenna won the women’s 10-mile in 58:44. Jim won the 60-64 age-group in 66:03. Joyce was the second woman in the 5k in 18:09.

Since those guys raced on Saturday, it meant Sunday’s practice was rather lonely. It ended up being me and a bunch of triathletes, who were doing a slightly different workout. Oh well, you can’t always rely on others during a race - gotta be able to push the pace yourself. So I ended up running 3 x 2 “miles” by myself in 12:53, 12:51, 12:51. If I’m not fast, I’m at least consistent.

Hmm, I barely mentioned the Nude Mile and now I’m getting a bunch of requests for more information. Who knew nudity on the web would be so popular? It may come as no surprise that alcohol was involved before partaking in said event. It occurred the evening after the first home track meet – usually in April.

Historically, there’d be a party until around midnight, then people would get naked and haul ass down Water Street, which has about 12 bars in a 2-block stretch. People would run down the street once and then off into the “sunset.” Of course, there were spectators, but mainly just those who happened to be walking from bar to bar.

Somewhere along the way things change in 1993, the first year I ran the race. Word got out that the Nude Mile was going to take place at midnight. So of course, the streets were packed with spectators; think of a mountain stage of the Tour de France or of Wellesley, along the Boston course and you’ll have an idea of what the street looked like. And of course we didn’t just run by once and call it a night. We ran back-and-forth like 4-6 times. Remember this is mid-April. In Wisconsin. At midnight. I don’t remember the temperature, but I remember it being cold.

That night is still one of the top-3 rushes I’ve ever experienced from running. Plus the t-shirts were cool. In addition to the one pictured below, there’s one with a caricature of the 2 old guys from Bartels and James, running naked. There privates are covered by the finish banner.

Ahhh, to be in college again…

Note: the photo will have to wait, as blogger is sucking right now.

Of course congratulations go out to Floyd Landis (I almost typed Lloyd Flandis) for his tour victory. It’ll be interesting to see what happens after his hip surgery. Today’s quote of the day is for Floyd (or Lloyd);

“It’s at the borders of pain and suffering that the men are separated from the boys.” – Emil Zatopek

NOT RUNNING RELATED

Just so you don't think this is all about running, here are some photos of my girls.

Kinsey and Katie (and me in the background - digging through their candy) watching a 4th of July parade.

























Katie and Kinsey at the Minnesota Zoo.

CHANGE OF PLANS

Well I’m glad I stayed off the message boards yesterday. What an incredible stage by Landis!!! Mario said it as well as I can.

I’m making a slight change of plans to my training. I was planning to increase my mileage yet again this week, however, now I’m going to make it a cutback week. “Life” got in the way yesterday. What I thought was going to be a quick ice cream social for my daughter’s week-long church camp turned into a concert/ice cream social. I’m sure my wife mentioned the concert part, but I have selective hearing. Anyway, we didn’t get home till 8 and it was 8:30 by the time the girls got to bed. So instead of running, I grabbed a beer and watched Landis’ epic stage win.

Although I have run the Nude Mile a couple of times, I’m not much of a streaker. Running 8,000 days in-a-row doesn’t mean anything to me unless it makes me faster. So I didn’t give a second thought to ending my current streak at 27 days. Also, I don’t believe the body knows or cares what a “week” is or whether your log book goes from Sunday to Saturday, Monday to Sunday, Wednesday to Tueday, etc. Therefore, this cutback “week” could be anywhere from 3-10 days – depending on how I feel.

Growing up, my town had an annual festival every July and it included a 10k and a 2-mile fun run. It’s a fairly small town, only about 9,000 people. Yet I remember there being a couple of hundred runners in each race. Heck, it seemed like every kid in town ran the 2 mile. Well I just checked the results from this year’s race; 39 people ran the 10k and 11 people ran the 2 mile. 11 freaking people!!! WTF!? And we wonder why American distance running has dropped off or why obesity is on the rise.

I was in a meeting the other day with our Chief Marketing Officer and he was talking about how he loves to shop. He even keeps folders for things like watches, clothes, each room in his house, etc. Then when he sees an ad or article he likes, he rips it out and puts it in a folder. All this time I’m thinking; “What a fruitcake?!” Later that evening it hit me. I do the exact same thing when it comes to running and fitness. I have folders with my favorite articles on training, nutrition, race results, etc. I guess I’m a fruitcake too, just with a different passion than our CMO.

Today’s quote of the day is more of a paraphrase of the day;

“I don’t care about that. I’ve said all along, I’m here to win the tour…If someone wants to win the tour, they’re going to have to earn it.” – Floyd Landis when asked what he thought of winning his first stage ever in the Tour de France

VICIOUS CYCLE

Tuesday night I met my training group for what would be my first (semi-hard) workout in over 2 months – or what felt like forever. After a 2 mile warm-up, we ran 25 minutes of the Twin Cities Marathon hill – at least the hardest part from the Lake Street Bridge to the U of St. Thomas.

Prior to doing the hills someone said they were able to get in 2 reps the previous week. So I started the workout thinking we were going to do 2 hill repeats. As I crest the hill of the 2nd rep, I see that only 16 minutes have passed. Shit. Now I have to go from thinking I’m done with the hills to turning around and doing another rep. Apparently they did a slightly different hill last week.

Oh well…I felt good on the hills. I think that was partially due to being fresh – as in not having a lot of weekly miles on my legs. And partially due to taking more of a hard/easy approach. Prior to hill workouts in the winter, I’d still get in 10-12 miles the day before. This week I just ran an easy 6 miles the day before.

After the hills we headed to the track for “mile” repeats. I ran 3 and was fairly consistent; 6:06, 6:07, 6:08 – consistently slowing down, I guess. I was pretty controlled, so there’s hope for me yet.

This training group finally has a runner that can kick Jenna’s ass. The x-c champion from the local D3 conference has joined the group. He’s also doing tris now, so hopefully that won’t stunt his sub-26 minute 8K speed. And maybe some of that will rub off on me.

Yes the weather has turned pretty nice here lately, so what have I done. I’ve hopped on the treadmill. Actually, that’s mainly due to the Tour de France. I stayed up passed 10 after Tuesday’s workout and there was no way I was waking up at 5. So last night I jumped on the mill for a very easy 5 miles while watching the tour. Again, it lasted past 10, so I decided to run tonight’s harder effort on the mill too – while watching the TDF. It’s a vicious cycle.

Speaking of the tour, yesterday I was purposely avoiding any results because they’re in the mountains now and I knew it’d be more fun to watch if I didn’t know the outcome. Well, I went to the letsrun.com message board at lunch and the first thread I saw said, “Floyd Landis is now 9:25 down on the leaders today!” Thanks a lot for posting that, asswipe!

So today I’m blogging rather than surfing message boards.

Quote of the day;
“During the hard training phase never be afraid to take a day off. If your legs are feeling unduly stiff and sroe, rest; if you are at all sluggish, rest; in fact, if in doubt, rest.” – Bruce Fordyce

SKELETON DANCE

It’s amazing how much the weather can change in 24 hours. Yesterday’s weather was very similar to Sunday’s; 80-85 degrees with a dew point over 70. Today is was 60-65 with a dew point of 50. I was almost cold out there – even with a t-shirt on.

Yesterday I managed a very easy 5 miles. I had thoughts of running another easy 5 miles in the evening but I decided to “make my easy days easy and my hard days hard.” Instead, I added another 5 easy miles this morning and I’ll follow that up with a hard hill/track workout tonight.
That’s it. That’s all I have today; weather and 2 easy 5 mile runs to report.

While I was injured I was posting passages that I like from Running with the Buffaloes. I kind of got away from that as I got healthy. Rather than going off on GPS, HRM, iPODs, etc, I’ll get back to the book.

“If you can get to four miles feeling good, then people will be doing the skeleton dance there. Go by sensory data. It’s never wrong. Respiration tells you everything.” – Wetmore to Tessman

Tessman already understands the beauty of Wetmore’s system. It is designed to make you run well at a specific time. It is a system built on faith, because you cannot panic if you are not racing as fast as you can during the season. – Lear

Talking about how talented a cyclist Chris Severy was in high school…He raced the Mt. Evans Hill Climb, a ride that starts at over 7000 feet and finishes at over 14,000 feet, clad in a T-shirt and shorts. He was and still is “anti-gear,” and he loved “how all the other cyclists would be pissed when some kid in a T-shirt and shorts beat them.” He was there, he said, “to race, not to win a fashion contest.” He went on to win the amateur portion of the race, beating legendary triathlete Mark Allen by two minutes, and his time would have placed him 20th among the pros.

As with seemingly every cross-training regimen, his ambition to get after it cycling or swimming has faded with each subsequent day. – Lear on Batliner’s injury

Like the others, his training is what gives him confidence, or as he puts it, “my training and fitness govern my mind. My mind is completely reactive to my physical strength and my fitness.” – Batliner

Wetmore never counts on his athletes running out of their heads. He was and is preparing them to approach NCAA’s as just another race. After all, “How many people go to the National Championships and run better than they have all year? Ten percent? I don’t want to go in having to run better than ever. I want them to think business as usual. If five of us run business as usual, we’ll be alright.” For this reason there will be no fire and brimstone speeches. Wetmore believes “the more cranked up you are on rhetoric, the less likely you are to run well. You go out hard the first mile, mile and a half, and run worse than you would have.”

Quote of the day;
“Every day I'm training I'm at least thinking about racing.” – Double

DO-OR-DIE

Being in the Midwest (and not being in Chicago) means that I don’t have access to lots of cool races and professional endurance athletes. So when the Lifetime Fitness triathlon is in town, I like to go down and watch. While I thought conditions were a little better than last year, that’s not saying much. At 8 AM it was already approaching 80 degrees with dew points in the low 60s and bright blue skies. Highs for the day were forecasted at 97.

Given that nearly ¼ of the field is new to the sport and that some of these athletes wouldn’t be starting till 10:30, the organizers shortened the Olympic distance race for age-group athletes by 6 miles – 3 on the bike and 3 on the run.

In the pro “equalizer” race the woman were given just under a 10 minute head start. It wasn’t enough as Hunter Kemper passed Emma Snowsill about halfway through the run. Hunter would hang on to win while 6 other men also passed Emma before she finished.

In the past, NBC would broadcast the race in the afternoon. However, it appears they want to put a little more time into their production, as they are waiting 2 weeks before airing the race.

A little off-topic, but I’d like to thank the sport of triathlon for having their athletes write their age on their calf. What a great way to figure out how old all the hotties are!

While watching the race, I got in an easy 9 miles. It was even easier than “normal” due to all the stopping, standing, cheering, and starting again. Probably not the best way to get in my miles, but it’s not like I do that every day.

That run gave me 74 miles for the week on 8 runs. While I normally take a cutback week every 3 weeks, I haven’t done that this time around – yet. I think I have one more week in me before needing to cut back.

Saturday I surprised Evan by telling him I would join him on Sunday at 5 AM for a long run. Actually, after working out the details, I didn’t have to meet him till 5:40. Yes, getting up at 4:50 on a Sunday does suck – especially when it’s already 82 degrees with a dew point of 72. However, getting in 17 miles by 8 AM feels great.

During the run we were trying to determine if this weather is worse than the last time we ran together, when it was 38 degrees and rainy for the whole 20 miles. I don’t think we came to a consensus.

Quote of the day;
“The only tactics that I admire are do-or-die.” – Herb Elliott

PURE HARD WORK

I’ve been blogging about a year-and-a-half now and this morning I thought “Did I have similar thoughts prior to blogging or does blogging bring them out?” I don’t know but nearly all of today’s 8 mile run was spent thinking about this post. I didn’t plan that, it just sort of happened. This is meant to be a motivational post and it’s aimed as much at me, as you.

The great thing about running is the harder you work the better you get. The same can’t always be said for team sports where your teammates also play a role or sports like golf and swimming where technique is so important or even triathlons where you can simply buy speed.

For the most part, hammer away at running and you will run faster. If you’re unmotivated couch-potato with a poor work ethic, “competitive” running is probably not for you.

If you’re waiting for that quick-fix pill, recovery drink, or shoe that’s going to make you faster, you’re going to be waiting for a long time. Heck, even with EPO (I assume) you have to bust your ass. You can’t just sit around playing x-box and develop into an awesome runner.

There are lots of bloggers out there with goals; goals of qualifying for Boston, breaking 4 hours, being “average”, etc. Are they all busting their ass? I don’t know, but I’d venture a guess that whatever they’re doing, they could do more.

I told Susan she should take her highest mileage ever and add 50% to that and then build up to that number over the next 6 weeks. Sure it may sound absurd to go from 55 mpw to 80 mpw, but why not? Okay, how about 70 mpw? Don’t feel like going higher? How about building back to 55 but this time hold that mileage longer than before?

Maybe you only run 4 days a week. How about trying for 5 and then 6 and then 7…? What about throwing in a month of hills or finding a group of people to push the pace or following a plan that’s a little more difficult than you’d like…a little out of your comfort zone?

As the saying goes, “If you want something you’ve never had before, you have to do the things you’ve never done before.” Sure the “status quo” may work for awhile, especially if you’re new to running. But at some time you’re going to reach a plateau or a point of diminishing returns and you may need to shake up your program.

I’ve seen guys go from being unable to break 6:00-pace for 3200 meters in high school to running 2:28 (sub-5:40 pace) 10 years later. Don’t want to wait that long? I’ve seen guys run 30-minute 8K one year and 26 minutes the next. But these guys worked hard, very hard, to achieve those results.

Ever notice that when we tell kids to try something we say “It won’t hurt you” but when we tell adults to try something we say “It won’t kill you”? Hmm, should we assume then that it will hurt us?

Maybe.

Sure, doing the things listed above may lead to injury or they may lead to PRs across the board – or both. There’s only one way to find. If you do happen to get injured, it’s okay. The body does heal and we’re able to ratchet our training up again – faster than if we’d never been at those levels before.

I’ve posted this article by Beck (no, not the singer) numerous times, but it seems like I have some new readers, so I’m posting it again. It’s one of my favorites, especially the second half. He does a much better job of expressing these thoughts than me.

Quote of the day;
"The prevailing training philosophy in 1977 was 'more is better', and weekly mileage was the stuff of competition. If Derek Clayton was quoted as running 160 miles per week, then someone else would try 175 miles per week... This approach to training may sound harsh - and it was - but it reaped rewards. Distance running in the U.S. improved markedly, and although there were a few casualties along the way, pure hard work generally paid dividends." - Pete Pfitzinger

ALL-OR-NOTHING

As I continue to think about strength training, stretching, nutrition and the other ancillary details that could help my running – but never seem to get done – I came up with this realization; I don’t have to treat these things with the same “all-or-nothing” approach that I take with my running. I don’t have the time (there’s that excuse again), energy or mental fortitude to approach those topics with the same vigor that I do running.

So what happens? After a few days or weeks of including these activities, they eventually fall to the wayside. I think a better approach would be not to focus on following any sort of plan. If I get the urge to lift, then I should go lift. If I’m sitting in front of the TV doing nothing, I should lie on the ground and do some stretching or crunches. The key is to remove that added pressure of “having” to do those things regularly.

Another thing I find with these types of activities is that as I get fitter, they become more of my routine. If I run a good race I’ll be like “Wow, what if I cut out all that junk food and threw in some core work? I’d run even faster.”

I thought I’d give an update regarding my advertisement. Now I like the letsrun.com message board as much as the next person. If you sift through all the threads on hotness, music, soccer, Lance, etc. you might even find a nugget or two on running. The problem is that these other threads are so numerous that running-related threads can get pushed off the front page very quickly. So basically I’m saying I didn’t get any bites off of that message board. I did get 2 responses off one the coolrunning message boards. In addition, I got 10 responses from an email I sent out to runners I know. Now the hard part is going to be finding a day, time and place where people can meet.

Thanks to “Bear” for sending me this NY Times article regarding aging star athletes. Here’s a sample paragraph from the article;

The dirty secret among former high school and college jocks is that many don't remain active as adults. In their glory days they were the fittest among their peers. But as adults many are overtaken by nonjocks who embrace fitness as a commitment to health, forget the varsity letter.

Hmm, my 20 year high school reunion is only a year away. It’ll be interesting to see what all the jocks look like.

Oh, before I forget, I ran 7 easy recovery miles this morning. After work I'm meeting my friend Mary for another 5-7 easy miles. It's supposed to be 92 with a dew point in the upper 60s - not fun.

On a non-running related note…for all you women who’ve ever wanted to change your man, here’s another NY Times article that’s pretty interesting and funny. Thanks to Eric for sending it to me.

Since I didn’t have a quote of the day yesterday, I'll throw in a bonus quote today; one from each of the NY Times articles.

“When you run at such a competitive level and come back to do it at a recreational level, that is a hard transition to make. With no goal, I find it hard to get out there. There's nothing to shoot for." - Howie Zebersky, 32, who raced for the State University at Albany

“I felt as if I should throw him a mackerel.” – Amy Sutherland, after using techniques she learned from dolphin trainers to ‘train’ her husband

WILD AND CRAZY

So the girls are spending the night at Grandma's. It's just my wife and I at home. And I'm sitting here blogging. Afterwards I'll probably go and play a killer game of baseball on x-box and then watch the TdF. It's a wild and crazy life - I know.

Yesterday's post talked about wanting to get buffed and ripped, but not wanting to put in the effort. In a comment I wrote that I just don't have the time. Later I was thinking that this really isn't true. After putting the girls to bed I have about 75-90 minutes before I have to hit the hay. Sure I could lift and do crunches during that times (and sometimes I do), but sometimes a guy just wants to have some chips, drink a beer and watch TV.

The same goes for stretching. How many people have been injured and swear that "once they're healthy" they'll continue doing all the stretching, strength training, etc. that their doctor recommends. But once they are healthy, they go right back to their old ways. When the ART doctor gave me to active release stretches, I swore I'd do them no matter what. Well that lasted for about a week. It didn't help that my calves actually felt better the days after I didn't stretch. Oh well, I'm all talk.

This morning's run may have been my last before the heatwave strikes. It was a comfortable 65 degrees. "Luckily", we haven't had any rain in about 2 months, so the humidity has been low. I set my alarm to 4:50, which allowed me to get in 11 miles. I didn't push as hard as yesterday, but it wasn't an easy run either.

Unlike these people that record each mile (yes, you know who you are), I just develop a few efforts for my miles. For example, yesterday's harder run is somewhere in the 7:30-7:45 range. Today's moderate run was closer to 8:00. Easy recovery days are 8:30. Then I just run for X minutes and divide by the pace that corresponds to the effort and tada...that's how many miles I ran that day. No, it's not exact, but my body isn't going to know the difference whether I log today's 90 minutes at 10 miles, 11 miles or 12 miles. No matter what I put in my log, the work has already been done.

ME NEITHER, LANCE

Alright, I made a couple of tweaks to my ad and posted it on a couple of message boards. I may have to also send an email to running friends to help get the ball rolling.

Writing this ad as well as creating a new post on letsrun must have zapped all my mental strength, as I can barely come up with a blog topic for the day. So I’m going to piggyback on other bloggers.

Andrew had a nice post yesterday regarding mileage and race results. I’ve always wanted to stand at the finish line of a race and give each runner a quick survey. Something like this;

How many life-to-date miles have you run?
How many miles did you run last year?
How many miles per week have you averaged over the last 3 months?

That’s it. Just something simple enough to see there’s a correlation between mileage (ever, last year and recently) and finishing place.

Awhile ago Susan posted this entry regarding balancing goals with actual motivation and dedication. That got me thinking about being fast vs. being fit – as in overall fitness, not scrawny-runner-fit. I have these dreams of being fit – ripped muscles, 6-pack abs, stud-triathlete-fit. I even lift once in awhile and do some crunches. But the program never really lasts because when it comes right down to it, I’d rather be scrawny and fast, than fit and slow. So for the most part I just stick with running.

I don’t know if it’s these thoughts or because I’ve been watching the Tour de France, but lately I’ve had a desire to go for a bike ride. I think it started after watching the individual time trial the other day. Anyway, I dusted off my tri bike last night and went out for an easy 40 minute ride. I suppose that’s equal to about a 2 mile run.

I have to be to work at the same time everyday. So if I want to get in more miles, my alarm as to be set earlier and earlier. Today this meant 5 AM in order to get in 10 miles. I felt really good after holding the pace back yesterday. It’s nice that my legs are able to bounce back after 1 easy day. This run pushed me over a little milestone; 70 miles for the last 7 days.

Quote of the day;
“It's painful. Running is totally different from cycling - the impact on the body. "Those guys (marathon runners) train hard, watch what they eat and go to bed early - things I don't want to do anymore. I'm over that. I like to have a bit of fun.” – Lance Armstrong

WANTED

I'm seriously considering posting this on a bunch of message boards. What would you think if you saw it? Assume you met the "standard," would it pique your interest? Would you sign up? Any changes?

WANTED: 2:50-3:05 (1:20-1:28 half) marathon runners in the Twin Cities. Looking to form a new training group that’s interesting in pushing the pace 1-2 times a week.

No sign-up fee. No monthly fee. No uniforms to buy. No fancy website. No monthly newsletter. No cool logo. You will not receive a discount to local running stores or a training plan to follow.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re following Pfitz, Daniels, Lydiard, Galloway, etc. It doesn’t matter whether you call these runs steady state, progression, strong aerobic or marathon pace. It’s about meeting for a 10-15 mile run with some quicker miles thrown in.

I won’t check and verify your PRs to see if you meet the “standards” or not. If you’re faster and want to join us for an easy day, that’s great. If you’re slower and want to be pushed, that’s great too.

Night of the week, time and place are all TBD, based on response. If you’re interested, or know someone that might be, please send me an email and we’ll see if we can make this work.

As for my training over the weekend, Saturday I pushed Katie for 2 miles before continuing on for another 6 very easy recovery miles. That gave me 64 miles for the week.

Sunday I woke up and felt like I needed a change of scenery. I drove to Lake Nokomis* to start my run. I ran around the lake, down Minnehaha Parkway, around Lake Harriet and back down the Parkway. That took 1:57 and I called it 15 miles – my longest run in 8 weeks.

This morning I had one of my most boring runs ever. I just wanted an easy 7 mile recovery day, so I thought I’d check out things north of interstate 494. Other than seeing a 1.5 million dollar house for sale, I ended up running through another industrial area. Again, most of it didn’t have a sidewalk, so I was dodging cars. No surprise, my legs were tired after yesterday’s “long” run.

*Some of you may recognize Lake Nokomis as it’s the starting point of the Lifetime Fitness Triathlon. Since the race is next Saturday, there were lots of triathletes there checking things out. Note: if anyone is coming to town for this race be aware that the forecast is calling for 96 and sunny. Have fun!

Quote of the day;
“Believe in yourself, know yourself, deny yourself, and be humble.” – John Treacy’s four principles of training prior to Los Angeles ‘84

MILES ARE KING

Based on yesterday’s post and Mike's comments, I thought I’d briefly recap my training from last winter for the throngs of new readers, those of you that read so many blogs you can’t remember one from the next, and most of all, just to jog my own memory.

Starting last November I made a concerted effort to follow the principles outlined in Ron Daws’ book; Running Your Best. Daws is an advocate of Lydiard’s training. During the initial stages of base building, Daws recommends evenly distributing your effort over the course of the week. For example; if you were running 70 mpw, you’d run 10 miles each day. At this point you forget all about hard/easy days and long runs. Once you reach the maximum mileage you’d like to maintain, hold it there for a week or two to make sure you can handle it – again, evenly distributing your effort. After you’ve done that, you can begin mixing in some hard/easy days, adding a long run, etc.

This worked great for me as I ran more miles than ever for the months of December – March, including taking my weekly all-time high from 85 to 100. This led to two of my fastest races in the last 10 years; a 29:15 8k in March and a 1:17:57 20K in April. These times were run off of just easy base miles and hills. By comparison, I spent the previous summer doing lots of speed work (and not many miles) and closed my season by running 39:02 for 10K. Following Daws’ program, less than 6 months later I’d hold that same pace for 20k.

Naturally, when I mentioned running faster during my training runs in yesterday’s post, Mike was all over it. I didn’t take the time to mention that I still plan on building my mileage back up prior to Chicago. Miles are still king. However, coming off of an injury, I need to be a little cautious. I won’t be following the 10% “rule” or anything like that, but I won’t be going from 32 to 100 in four weeks either.

My main reason for deciding to drop the pace is because, unlike last November, I don’t have the luxury of 8 months till my next marathon. Chicago is just over 3 months away – and approaching quickly.

You can call these runs whatever you want; easy, general aerobic, getting-the-miles-in, etc. I did a little math to see if my training paces are in-line with other runners. Say I currently do these runs at 8:00-8:15 pace. If I drop them to 7:30-7:45, it’d be (based on percentages) like a 2:40 marathoner running 6:40-6:55 or a 4:00 marathoner running 10:05-10:25. Heck, McMillan says a 3:00 marathoner should be running 7:23-7:53 for their easy days, so my times don’t seem out-of-whack.

I had one goal for last night and that was to be in bed by 9 PM. I missed, but only by about 10 minutes. It’s tough going to bed that early when your neighbors are out riding their bike, washing their car, walking the dog, etc. However, if I’m going to build my mileage back up it means getting up by at least 5 AM – and 7 hours of sleep is not going to cut it. Last night I got about 30-45 minutes more sleep than I had been getting and it felt great. This morning I ran 3.5 miles out/up in 27:30 and 3.5 miles back/down in 25:55. Throw in a mile with the dog for a total of 8. That gives me 56 for the week with 1 day left.

Today’s quote of the day is not from our Duncan, but I can see him saying it.

Someone once came up to Duncan MacDonald and said: “I saw you on television and read about you in the newspapers. How do you do it?” MacDonald answered: “I don’t watch television and I don’t read the papers.”

WHAT’S MISSING?

Alright, let’s start with the good stuff. I know who Dave Wottle is, but I was 3 in 1972, so I never got to see this race. Keep your eye on the guy with the white hat on – especially with about 250 meters to go.

I don’t know if it was the Landis interview or what, but I’ve been thinking about what’s missing from my training. In my mind I still think I have a shot at running times similar to what I ran in college. But I’ve had those thoughts for over 10 years now. Earlier this spring I was probably within a minute of my 5K time and two minutes of my 10k time. That’s still a fairly long ways a way.

While I’d like to “blame” it on age, this WAVA age-grading calculator says I should only be running 25 seconds slower for a 10K. And my mileage last winter was, by far, higher than ever. So I can’t “blame” that either.

The one thing that jumps out is intensity. Running with a team nearly every day is a lot different than running solo every day. I can remember running hard workouts on Tuesdays and recovery runs on Wednesdays at 7:15 pace. Granted, I skipped a lot of days, either due to being tired or being injured. And granted, I probably violated every Runner’s World “rule.” But the results do speak for themselves, as all my PRs from the half marathon and down are from my college days.

With that said, I’m going to try and push the pace a little more during some of my runs. I may not get down to 7:15 pace on my easy days, but I think I’ve proven that running 8:00 pace or slower isn’t going to get the job done. Heck, even if I run 7:30 pace, I’ll still be roughly 40-60 seconds/mile over my marathon pace. Maybe doing six runs a week at 8:00-8:30 pace and then trying to drop to 6:40 pace is too much. That large a jump may be too difficult physically and mentally.

These thoughts lead to an 8 mile run last night at 7:30 pace. It felt really good - comfortably hard. Really this run was no different than the last two Tuesday night group runs. The main difference is that I was by myself.

This morning I was tired but forced myself to get out of bed and lace my shoes up again – only 8.5 hours since my last run ended. I was surprised that I felt as good as I did, once I got going. I managed 9 miles around 8:00 pace.

Quote of the day;
“Running is a big question mark that’s there each and every day. It asks you, ‘Are you going to be a wimp or are you going to be strong today?’” – Peter Maher, Irish –Canadian Olympian and sub-2:12 marathoner

LANDIS LINK

Glad you guys liked the quotes from Landis. Here's the link to the article.

BTW, why am I paying for the magazine when I can read the articles online?

LANDIS INTERVIEW

First off, being an official member of Elizabeth Yetzer’s unofficial fan club I need to post this article (thanks to Eric for the heads up). It’s about Yetzer running 10:12 in the Nike Outdoor Nationals 2-mile and placing second to fellow Minnesotan, Bria Wetsch who ran 10:10. Mike Torchia who’s also been mentioned here before came in 4th in the boys’ race with a time of 8:50.

Since what follows is rather long, I just give the quick update on my training. I managed 8 miles yesterday – pushing Katie for 22 minutes and Kinsey for 44 minutes. When I push the girls my mileage is based on effort. It’s not like I was running 8:15 pace, but it felt like it.

This morning I ran a very easy 5 miles. I was planning on 7-8 but the bathroom was calling. I decided that’d I just call it an easy morning run and then (hopefully) double-up tonight. I wasn't planning on adding doubles for awhile, but the article below fired me up.

Yesterday I was reading an article in Outside on Floyd Landis and he had some really interesting things to say. The first is one of my pet peeves.

On giving more than 100%...
“Why not 112%? Why not 500% or 1300% or 38 billion percent? I mean, if he can crank it up beyond 100%, why not? What’s stopping him, exactly?”

On excuses…
“Everybody wants to say, ‘I couldn’t win because of this or that.’ To my way of thinking, it doesn’t matter if your goddamn head fell off or your legs exploded. If you didn’t make it, you didn’t make it. One excuse is as good as another.”

On training…
“There’s only one rule: The guy who trains the hardest, the most, wins. Period. Because you won’t die. Even though you feel like you’ll die, you don’t actually die. Like when you’re training, you can always do one more. Always. As tired as you might think you are, you can always do one more.”

Then his roommate says, “I hope some 16-year-old doesn’t read this and then go kill himself on the bike.”

To which Landis says, “That was what I did. I read something like that, and I trained like that, and, yeah, I was pretty damn depressed for a while. Then it got better.”

On overtraining…
Interviewer: “So there’s no such thing as overtraining?”
Landis: “If you overtrained, it means you didn’t train hard enough to handle that level of training. So you weren’t overtrained; you were actually undertrained to begin with. So there’s the rule again: The guy who trains the hardest, the most, wins.”

On sharing his training log…
“I don’t see what the big deal is. It’s just a number I produced on a certain day. What matters is what happens on the road.”

On Lance…
“I saw firsthand what Lance did, and it was superhuman. I saw how his system worked. It’s not necessary for me to be like Lance in every way. But there are some things that I want to take from that and use. Like his boldness at taking charge of things. His willingness to say, ‘This is what I want, and I’m going to take it.’ It’s very hard to compete against that.”

“Everything with Lance was so big. He was able to mange it all somehow. For me, that would be stupid. I train hard, I race my bike – that’s it. All the rest, that’s not me. I would be an idiot to try.”

Today’s quote of the day also comes from the Landis article regarding thoughts that he might be peaking too early for the Tour de France;

“Peaking too early? What is that, Chinese? Let me translate: Blah-blah-fucking-blah.” – Floyd Landis

HOW THE "MIGHTY" HAVE FALLEN

Here are 3 charts that I use to keep track of my 7-day, 31-day and 92-day rolling mileage. Can you tell when I got hurt? It's painful just to look at them. Time to start re-building.

TRAINING UPDATE

Wow, I didn’t know the Vita trail would receive so much attention.

Nice to see our sport get a little press locally as Elizabeth Yetzer was named female high school athlete of the year by the St. Paul paper.

Here’s an update on my recent training. Saturday I pushed Katie for 20 minutes and then headed out for another 37 minutes. I called it 7 miles – giving me 51 for the week. So my last 3 weeks have been 32, 40 and 51. I’m going in the right direction and should be in the low 60s this week.

Sunday I headed to the local trails for an easy “long” run. Knowing the black flies are in-season I decided to spray on some OFF before heading out. I’m happy to report that it worked. While the flies were still swarming around my head at times, they never bit me. I passed one other runner and all he said was “Man, these black flies…” Even though I never got bit, the swarming is enough to drive someone crazy. Every time they came around I dropped the pace. When you think about it, it doesn’t really make much sense to speed up since the flies don’t seem to notice the difference between 8:00 pace and 7:30 pace. I guess getting out of the wood 1-2 minutes sooner will have to do. I ended up with 90 minutes and called it 11 miles – my longest run in 7 weeks.

This morning was an easy 7 miles; 1 with the dog from home and then 6 on the trails near my office. I finally managed to get off the pavement and onto the woodchip trails. The trails are awesome but it takes me 2 miles to get to them. I know there’s another way into the park that’s only about a mile from where I park. I’ll have to try that later on – now that I know OFF works.

I’m usually turned-off immediately when athletes start giving thanks to God. You know;

Interviewer: “How’d the race go?”

Athlete: “(pant, pant) I want to (pant, pant) give all thanks (pant, pant) to God.”

That’s great, but that’s not what the interviewer asked you. Do that on your own time. With that said, today’s quote of the day comes from the article I linked above.

“It's a great feeling to know you've pushed yourself to your fullest potential, especially on race days. If I don't do my best, it's pointless. I don't feel proud. It violates the reason I run: to go all out to glorify God. I try not to make that happen. I try to push myself to my fullest potential, but you never know what you have in you.” – Elizabeth Yetzer