For Whom the Dogs Bark

70F, 94%, S 6 mph.  I wasn't going to run this morning, but I woke up very early and didn't feel too bad.  Wasn't anything else to do so I went through my robot routine and was out the door in 17 minutes.  To my surprise I felt pretty good, kept pace up with a lot less effort than yesterday.  Quit early because I have a race in two days which all of a sudden I am planning on again, and I am hoping to do some hill work on the treadmill.  I went to the gym at noon and all the treadmills were full, so I did a little big of leg work on the weights and came back to the office.  Hopefully I can get a hill session in tonight.  5.13 miles in 45:15, 8:50 per mile.

70F, 93%, SSW 6 mph.  Ran 5 more, which is kind of halfway between tapering and not tapering.  Either the best of both worlds or the worst.  5.00 miles, right at my doorstep.  42:45, 8:33 per mile.  Foot and abs feel so-so, put ice on the foot and that made a big difference, so apparently the pain comes from inflammation.  Tomorrow might be a disaster.  I don't feel properly trained with all of the interruptions and lingering injuries in the last two weeks, and it is currently forecast at 57F for race time with a 15 mph north wind.  All week they have been holding to a 44F forecast, then it turns out they meant Saturday night, after the cold front comes.  We get to race while the front is moving in.  Still warm, but at least it's windy.  If 57F holds that won't be too bad, but I am skeptical, it always takes longer for the weather to change than they predict.  There is a chili cook-off at the church tonight -- might as well go and finish the job.

57F, 47%, N 11-21 mph.  Pretty good race, could have been worse under the circumstances, course was a little longer than my last half, so I am putting the non-standard distance I measured solely for comparison purposes.  Met Allie (a.k.a. allie) very briefly after she finished a very good marathon then had to hurry home as Wade and Linda had responsibilities (unlike me).  Linda got a 4-minute PR, Wade missed his PR by a couple of minutes.  Weather not a big factor.

Met Wade and Linda at 5:30 and headed to The Woodlands.  It was 62F at 5:30 but the cold front was moving in and it was already down to 58F by the time the race started at 6:55, possibly colder than that at the end.  Other than Linda’s big PR, and other than meeting allie, the highlight of the morning was standing in the PoP line.  (Don't go anywhere.)  There was a guy about 5 spots ahead of us in line who had the elite look, no body fat, ripped abs, fast shoes, compression socks -- and no shirt.  By this time it was colder, with a stiff breeze, and you could see skin quivering underneath his goose bumps.  Linda commented to me that he must be very fast.  But something seemed off, and I reminded her that Naked Man hadn’t run yet.  There were a couple of women in line between us and him and he was talking to them like old acquaintances.  That notion was dispelled when his turn came and he disappeared into the open slot.  One of the women turned to the other and said, “I think he is a non-door closer”.  Then it was her friend’s turn because she suddenly saw one with a “green open” indicator on the door.  She hurried up and opened it, froze, then started screaming.  Her friend had nailed it.  It made Linda’s morning, she was so relaxed she went out and ran a 4-minute PR.  When she finished, the first thing she said was “I passed Naked Man in mile 5”.  She is now a runner for life.

So this morning I ran pretty even splits:  7:04, 7:01, 6:58 (175), 7:08 (176), 7:12 (176), 7:14 (175), 7:09 (174), 7:15 (174), 7:11 (174), 6:56 (175), 7:06 (178), 7:12 (177), 7:02 (177) and 6:38 (180) for the stub split -- 1:33:50, which is 3 seconds slower than my last one 3 weeks ago.  But the course measured long today, so my actual pace as measured was 3 seconds faster, not much but something, and more importantly it is the second time I have done it so I know it’s real.  Overall 60th place (top 2%) and 1st in age division.  I found myself running with a guy who probably slowed me down to some extent.  He ran in the passing lane and he would eventually slow down to the point I would pass him, which would wake him up and he would pass me within a quarter mile like clockwork.  Kind of like driving on the freeway.  Finally at mile 10 I tired of the game and hammered out a 6:56 which broke him, he finished a minute behind me.  He is the best excuse I have today for running slower than planned.  I set up the weather, my left foot and my sore abs as the bogeymen, but they were all non-factors -- sometimes you have to dig a little deeper but there’s always one out there if you are persistent.

Six weeks to Boston.  I have enough speed for current purposes, but definitely felt an endurance limitation this morning.  At mile 9 I told myself that Boston would be my last marathon, then I changed my mind after mile 10.  I am considering piling on a bunch of long runs, they seem to help the most.  But I have some more travel coming up and then some vacation, not sure how it will all play out.  It has been difficult to manage a consistent training schedule this year, but my wife is opposed to me quitting my job.

44F, 97%, calm and clear.  Beautiful running weather, and no seminary run this month.  I am traveling to Taipei tomorrow, so trying to get some miles in.  Wanted to go 20 but turned around early and came in at 15.71, trying to be a little more careful about my foot than I have in past weeks.  Average pace 9:00.  It got kind of hard to hit those 9s after about 8 or 9 miles, lots of aches and pains left over from Saturday.  Not too worried, though, I think I am going to be fine unless I do something dumb, which is certainly possible.

10 on TM in Taipei, 9:00 pace, at midnight after checking in.  Body clock non-existent.

10 more at 9:00 pace on TM in Taipei before catching cab to airport.

62F, 68%, E 13 mph.  Intended to do a fast finish long run, but I have acquired a respectable sore throat with everything going on this week.  Did the first half of it though:  10.13 miles at 8:15 per mile.  Legs felt strong.  Duh, I haven't done anything this week.  This has been a great taper week, but the Boston Athletic Association said they wouldn't move up their date for me.  They seemed quite inflexible, something about a planeload of Kenyans coming in on non-refundable tickets.  I could have come up with something better than that.

Headed on a spring break road trip with wife and daughter, to North Carolina, Virginia and Washington D.C., should be fun.  I think there will be enough time to run.

Knoxville, Tennessee.  Well, it has been quite a road trip, haven't been that sick in at least 10 years, maybe 20.  I had every imaginable flu symptom and I had them good.  At least it got me out of another trip to Taiwan this weekend -- maybe that is where I picked up this bug, people are telling me I sound kind of like a bird now.  I went on drugs a couple of nights just to get some sleep.  I still have Nyquil in my system, that stuff is nasty.  Not sure if medicated sleep is that good for you but it got me through the night.  Then all day traipsing around looking at the sights in D.C., it has been quite a week.  Posted my first 0 this week, to go with my first 100 a few weeks ago, symmetry is a wonderful thing.  Yeah, I am running Boston in a few weeks.  Training is in shambles.  I'll go out on Monday morning if I continue to improve and try to assess the damage.  I might be available to pace the 5-hour group at Boston.

73F, 84%, SSE 12 mph (gusting to 18 mph).  Hot and windy out there.  Tried 5 slow miles and was feeling it pretty good in my lungs and joints.  Legs were strong, amazingly my lower abs still hurt after not running for 9 days.  Heart rate started out OK but the drift was steep.  Could definitely still feel the flu, will try again later today if I am feeling OK.  5.05 miles in 44:50, 8:53 per mile.

72F, 93%, SSW 13-25 mph.  Hot and windy, perfect running weather.  My Garmin was out of juice, so I ran without it.  Had to quit early because a thunderstorm was starting up.  By the time I drove to a dentist appointment a half hour later it was raining 2 or 3 inches an hour, very heavy.  Felt slightly better than yesterday.  Abs were a little less painful, but can definitely feel the leftover flu, it will be a while before it is gone.

58F, 85%, WNW 7 mph, light rain.  Cooling down a little from yesterday, which was welcome.  Ran 11.07 miles in 1:37:37, average 8:49 per mile.  Still have the flu, heart rate was at 160 by the time I finished, too high for this speed.  Legs felt decent, but heavy by the end.  Abs are still sore.  Just playing it by ear on Boston -- really don't want to go to all the trouble of getting up there and dealing with all the expenses and logistics just to do a training run.  I read yesterday that if you don't run at all for a week it takes two weeks to get it back.  Possibly even slower for me since everything is easy-paced right now.  Nothing to do but wait and see.

56F. 77%, S 3 mph.  Very good weather today, got out a little late and so I was still out when the sun up, which was nice, haven't seen the sun in a while.  Abs and flu are slowly improving.  I didn't really want to go out today because I knew it would hurt, but it wasn't quite as bad as yesterday, and even less than two days ago.  Heart rate for mile 12 (8:52, 155 bpm) was close to mile 10 yesterday (8:50, 156 bpm).  Still too high, but getting a little stronger.  Overall 12.13 miles in 1:48:31, 8:57 per mile.

53F, 100%, NNW 3 mph.  Didn't feel good this morning, woke up with sore abs, so decided to only go 6 and check my reaction throughout the day.  The 6 went fine, obviously my legs and cardio are much better now that I am a week away from the flu, only a little bit of it is left in my system.  But my gut hurt pretty much throughout the run, although it didn't get worse and it wasn't a sharp pain.  6.07 miles in 51:53, 8:31 per mile, then stretched and rolled.  Right now I don't feel like I can run fast, though interestingly it didn't hurt to run almost 30 seconds faster today than yesterday.  I am going to make an honest try at a hard long run tomorrow.  If it doesn't go well I will probably not do Boston this year, really don't want to go there unprepared.

55F, 100%, calm and 50-foot fog.  Could barely see out there, which was good, because it was ugly.  Simply couldn't hold a marathon pace.  Started out at a 7:30 pace and got so tired I pulled up after about 1K, then picked it up again on miles 2 and 3, where I hit 7:30 and 7:29, but mile 4 was 7:42 and my heart rate hit 166 and was climbing.  Overall 4.06 miles in 31:37, 7:47 per mile.  After running two halves at 7:09 and 7:06 pace, I know that today's speeds are not close to my potential.  Amazing how much havoc a few bad weeks of running creates.  I will not be ready for Boston and it takes too much time and money to go there just to go.  I know others don't feel that way about Boston, and I certainly look forward to the time I can go there prepared to run my best, but for me it isn't important just to be there.  Realistically, I would run about 3:35 to 3:40 and that isn't good enough.  It's hard enough to get a good marathon time at peak fitness; I have no desire to run one unprepared.  I might be able to find a good marathon somewhere this summer -- suggestions welcome, nothing hot and nothing at altitude!  But mainly I need to keep training and chipping away at the granite mountain.

60F, 96%, clear and calm.  Beautiful weather in Houston right now, unfortunately still not running too well.  12.17 miles in 1:45:48, 8:42 per mile, 150 bpm.  Very tired by the end of the day.

Forgot to record the weather data, but it felt about the same as yesterday.  I went to bed very early last night, then woke up at 3 a.m.  Finally went back to sleep at 4:30 and slept until 6, so I got out late.  Felt lethargic for most of the run.  I decided to back off on the pace a little bit, 13.47 miles in 2:05:45, 9:20 per mile, 144 bpm.  Heart rate would have been lower except that in mile 10 I passed a woman who was going pretty slow.  She decided she didn't like that and started drafting off of me (not kidding).  No words exchanged.  I finally gave up on my plan to keep heart rate under 150 no matter my speed, went to 160 for about a mile, turned around to look and she was out of sight.  I had to do something.

About then a loose pit bull came prancing out (I was running through a redneck zone) and wouldn't go away.  He wasn't overtly aggressive but I didn't trust him.  Finally got rid of him by crossing a busy street -- when he tried to follow there was the sound of brakes screeching.  He scurried back to his neighborhood, but I was pretty upset that somebody would just let a dog like that wander around, right when elementary school kids are catching their buses.

Can't believe how long it is taking to get over this flu.  I skipped my flu shot this year, even though they are free at work, I won't do that again.  When I got home I announced to my wife that I am old.  She said "duh", which isn't even a word from our generation.

60F, 100%, calm and clear.  Felt better today.  Also turned 57 today, nothing I could do about it.  Ran 15.07 miles, trying to keep heart rate lower.  2:18:45, 9:13 per mile, 146 bpm. 

68F, 97%, ESE 4 mph.  Getting quite a bit warmer, I don't think we will see sub-60 too many more times until late in October.  Ran 10.18 miles, trying to keep heart rate around 140.  1:35:44, 9:24 per mile, 139 bpm.  Just trying to get as many miles in as possible right now without over-running my conditioning.

69F, 95%, calm and cloudy.  Warming right up, left the mittens in the house today.  Was planning on doing 15 but it worked out differently.  I felt good after running slow yesterday, so found myself naturally speeding up.  All of a sudden I was in the low 8s and I semi-accelerated into a near-marathon pace.  I was doing well enough after mile 7 that I thought if I could hold the remainder all the way to mile 15 in the 7:30 to 7:40 range, I might re-think Boston.  (I had gone through my mail just before going out, and BAA had sent me a corrected bib for a better corral, based on my SGM time rather than my qualifying time, so I had Boston on the brain.)  But by the time I got to 10 I was done and I realized I had made the right decision.  Still, it was fun to run fast after slogging all week.  Splits were 9:06 (136), 8:07 (150), 8:02 (156), 7:54 (161), 7:58 (164), 7:42 (163), 7:35 (167), 7:41 (171), 7:50 (171, 7:42 (172).  10.01 miles in 1:19:39, 7:57 per mile, 160 bpm.

66F, 100%, calm and cloudy.  Got out the door at 5:00, then met Wade in his neighborhood at 6:00.  We ran a while and met my daughter back at our house at 7:00.  She is almost 6 months pregnant.  Wade and I had been hitting about 9:45 per mile up until then, but my daughter got us going, we were in the low 9s by the time she peeled off after 4+ miles.  Ran another mile with Wade, at which point I had 16.5, said good-bye and slogged out the remaining 3.5 in my neighborhood.  I was fighting this run mentally all the way to dropping Wade off, it has been way too long since I ran 20 miles.  At one point my cumulative pace was 9:41 -- I don't run much at this speed and it was playing with my head.  Also started bleeding despite using BodyGlide, so I was holding my shirt away from my chest for 6 miles -- that was an unusual sight.  But for the last 5K I picked it up naturally, wasn't really pushing anything, and felt better mentally.  But not completely acclimated to the heat yet, it will take a couple of weeks, maybe longer.  20.07 miles in 3:10:27, 9:29 per mile.  Forgot to look at the temperature when I got back but it was getting pretty warm, ran the last 5 miles on a couple of sips of water and felt a little nauseous when I got back.  Lower gut was also hurting from running fast yesterday, but hopefully it will be OK by Monday.