For Whom the Dogs Bark

May 02, 2024

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Location:

Cypress,TX,

Member Since:

Oct 10, 2009

Gender:

Male

Goal Type:

Other

Running Accomplishments:

5K: 24:22 (March 2010); 22:33 (October 2010); 20:47 (May 2011); 21:05 (May 2012); 21:33 (September 2012); 21:23 (November, 2013); 22:31 (September 2014)

5M: 39:22 (November, 2012); 35:54 (November, 2013); 36:03 (March, 2015)

10K: 44:08 (November, 2010); 49:20 (July, 2013); 44:07 (April, 2015)

12K: 56:03 (December, 2013); 58:58 (December, 2014)

10M: 1:11:58 (October, 2012); 1:15:24 (October, 2014)

Half Marathon: 1:53:xx (London's Run 2010); 2:05:21 (Cowtown 2010); 1:37:04 (Gusher 2011); 1:42:19 (Huntsville 2011); 1:33:47 (Baytown Jailbreak 2012); 1:33:50 (The Woodlands 2012); 1:42:52 (Texas 2015); 1:49:17 (Jailbreak 2015); 1:38:34 (The Woodlands 2015)

25K: 2:01:47 (Fifth Third River Bank, May 2014)

Marathon: 5:51:35 (Texas Marathon 2009); 6:21:36 (Ogden 2009); 4:58:29 (St. George 2009); 4:13:45 (Texas Marathon 2010); 4:04:12 (Utah Valley Marathon, 2010); 5:11:14 (Hartford ING, 2010); 3:41:43 (Richmond SunTrust, 2010); 3:39:27 (Texas Marathon 2011); 3:41:46 (Utah Valley Marathon, 2011); 3:30:35 (St. George 2011); 3:41:51 (Richmond 2012); 3:49:15 (Texas 2013); 3:46:59 (Paavo Nurmi, 2013); 3:34:04 (St. George 2013); 3:49:51 (Texas 2014); 3:31:59 (Richmond 2014); 3:28:34 (Boston 2015)

Short-Term Running Goals:

3:20, 1:30, 0:20

Long-Term Running Goals:

I'm 60, there is no long term.

Personal:

I live, work and run in Houston, Texas. I have run 17 marathons, some good ones and some others. I prefer straight, flat, cold, sea-level marathons, still waiting for my first one. I feel like there are more PRs out there. When I have them, I am told it is time to dial it back, run for healthy reasons. I'm sure that's right, and I'm sure it won't happen.

My wife and I are from the mountains of the west. We have five kids, three granddaughters and three grandsons. The kids and grandkids are native Texans but we are not -- you have to be born here.

As for my blog title: I run most of my miles before sunrise, sometimes hours before. On the back road of my neighborhood two hours before daylight, I can depend on a pack of mutts behind the boundary fence lighting up when they hear my footsteps. I have wondered what they wanted; but according to Hemingway I needn't ask.

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Miles:	This week:	0.00	Month:	0.00	Year:	0.00

Wed, May 04, 2011

Easy Miles	Marathon Pace Miles	Threshold Miles	VO2 Max Miles	Total Distance
6.16	5.00	0.00	0.00	11.16

45F (it's true), 83%, calm and clear. No seminary run today, in fact I am off for the rest of the school year, the other parent is taking over. So I exited the front door at 5:30 instead of 4:30, almost getting light already. The plan was to do 8 and stop but couldn't keep it to that in good conscience, not in this weather, 45 freaking degrees. I did 3 LHR miles, 10:05, 9:33 and 9:23; 1 transition, 8:16; 5 at GMP, 7:26 (156), 7:23 (161), 7:25 (164), 7:14 (167) and 7:26 (167); then 2 active cooldown, 8:35 (156) and 8:20 (152). Even though my heart rate wasn't that much lower than for comparable fast miles recently, it stopped climbing; I felt fresh and could have gone further without my tongue hanging out at an awkward angle. Also encouraging was my heart rate for the cooldown miles, which I took at my old marathon pace. I looked up my notes on the Richmond Marathon. Miles 10 and 11 came in at 8:41 (159) and 8:38 (168), both slightly slower than miles 10 and 11 this morning. Of course I ran miles 1-9 faster today than I did at Richmond, so it is significant that my heart rate was much lower this morning, even though it was 10 degrees cooler on that day (humidity about the same).

One last comment about the nightmare 5K I ran 10 days ago. I got an e-mail yesterday telling me I had won my age group and will be receiving a trophy in the mail (how about skipping the trophy and sending a gift certificate?). Even though I ran 3.11 miles that day in 21:18 according to my own watch, not my goal but not bad, I ran what seemed a mile and a half extra to get to the finish line, so I was skeptical. But I looked them up and here are the official results. No kidding, I won my age group with a chip time of 30:14. Not only that, they are declaring the winning time at 22:57. For a 5K? We may be a little slow here in Texas with our daily fights to ward off barbeque and TexMex, but I think these results show a different kind of slowness, the above-the-shoulder kind. I don't see how they can declare a winner with a straight face.

Event: 5K Division: M 50-59

PL No Name Age Pace Chip Time Gun Time

1 766 Mark Thurber 56 9:41/M 30:14 30:16

2 770 Mark Traylor 50 10:53/M 33:57 34:27

3 548 Andre Childress 57 12:55/M 40:17 40:39

4 763 Mike Thomas 50 13:50/M 43:11 48:14

5 755 Rob Sullivan 56 15:37/M 48:44 49:20

OK, I'm done talking about it now.

Comments

From SlowJoe on Wed, May 04, 2011 at 11:03:51 from 131.59.200.80

Just keep it up Flat, and one day you will get that sub-30.

And by the way, nice run, smart to take advantage of the temps like that. Getting to sleep in a little more will hopefully help too.

From I Just Run on Wed, May 04, 2011 at 11:21:41 from 67.79.11.242

Hey...I'm thinking you're an Elite Runner now with that dominating time...! You blew out the competition by over 4 minutes...Amazing!

I'm going to rename you "Flat-Out-Fast..!"

From derhammer on Wed, May 04, 2011 at 16:00:44 from 192.156.110.34

Wow - just think if they would have had a clearly marked course you would have been the winner! You should run it next year though you probably don't want to give those jokers any more money. :-)

From Rye on Wed, May 04, 2011 at 18:57:15 from 75.174.28.200

If you work a little harder you could shave that 15 seconds and get below 30. I guess it is true....you Texans do tell the 'big' stories. Thought that you should go the other way, say below 20...Joe maybe you got it wrong... you should be shooting for 4:05 for the next marathon...nice run flat!

From flatlander on Thu, May 05, 2011 at 10:27:58 from 76.31.26.153

Thanks guys, have been laughing at these comments since they came in. Our running club runs sometimes with the club in this neighborhood that let this race director in. I'm seriously thinking of doing some lobbying so they don't let her come back next year, but I probably won't. Life is too short. I have a makeup 5K this Saturday, should be fun to see what happens.

From I Just Run on Thu, May 05, 2011 at 10:50:38 from 67.79.11.242

I'm thinking if you try really...really hard you might beat your last 5K time :)

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