Liftoff

AM: 10 miles, with 4 @ 5:54 avg pace

PM: 6 miles at lunch with Quint.

My company announced a "Wellness Benefit" yesterday. Quarterly, you can expense iPhone workout apps, gym memberships, personal trainer fees, exercise videos and CrossFit.

You cannot expense running shoes.

AM: 5 miles with the girls to Northshore Park for some tree climbing. Then another 9 solo to meet up for a picnic lunch.

AM: 23 miles. 8 solo, then 8 with Steve Wilcox. Ended up at home, picked up the family and ran 7 more with the jogging stroller.

Goal for the week is a lot of miles, and keeping them slow. So far so good!

AM: 10 miles.

PM: 8 miles at lunch with Quint.

Due to the unrest in Baltimore, the Orioles moved their games against the Rays this weekend to St. Pete. All tickets were $15, general admission. I took my older daughter, and me made it to the seventh inning stretch - a new record for us.

My training partner, Lee, won a 5k on Sunday. Although my understanding on this point is imperfect, there is apparently some confederation of American nudist resorts, which conduct 5ks, and the Central Florida Bare-to-Dare 5k is considered the championships. So congrats to Lee-male nude 5k champion for 2015!

We close on our new house in 3.5 weeks. Not a single viewing request on our current home yet.

Unseasonably cool weather over the last five days. Won't see this again for five months.

AM: 10 miles.

PM: 10 miles, light track workout. Not too humid, thankfully.

1 X 1 MILE, 400 REST, 1 X 1200, 400 REST, 800 WITH 200 REST 800

Splits: 5:55, 4:27, 2:55, 2:55.

AM: 10 miles.

PM: 9 miles at lunch with Quint.

AM: 12 miles of running back and forth over the newly renovated Pinellas Bayway bridge. Yes, I am jealous of people who live in geographical regions containing changes in elevation.

PM: 9 miles at lunch with Quint and Josh. Feeling goofy.

AM: 11 miles - 3 warmup, then light fartlek the rest of the way.

PM:  9 miles at lunch with Quint.

AM: 10 miles. My wife gets first shift on Saturday, so while she was out running my girls and I turned out the lights and danced in our underwear. Even though I got to start my run around 8, it was already pretty unpleasant out. For most of the run I wished I was back inside boogeying down.

PM: 4 miles, off to Tampa for work-related dinner. My wife and I get a date out of it.

Great day, except the running part. My long suffering wife got to sleep in, and we made bacon, eggs and cinnamon rolls. 5 mile family run, then I headed back out a little after 10 to get the rest in. Quint met me midway through the run, and we got it done, but between the heat and excessive bacon consumption I was massively dehyrdated. The rest of the day was good though - headed into Tampa and relaxed with my wife's sister's family.

AM: 10 mile slog.

PM: 12 miles. Client meeting on the east side of the Clearwater Causeway got done in a hurry, so I had plenty of time for running at lunch. Met Quint a couple miles in and we ran west on the Causeway to just pass the hump. As we ran up the small pedestrian bridge, we saw a few dolphins swimming by. Different route, that really helped.

AM: 10 miles.

PM: 8 miles. Track didn't play out quite as planned. Workout was 400s, which I was planning to do a bit sub-MP. At the start of warmup, we could see a dark patch in the distance, otherwise clear and blazing sun. Within 45 minutes we had blackend sky and lightning strikes nearby. A few of us waited awhile, but it was only getting worse.

I got in 3 400s. On the block of classrooms next to the track, I got in two more miles running up to the second floor, along a short corridor and back down. It took about 20 of those to get a mile.

AM: 10 miles.

PM: 10 miles. Lunch meeting broke up the normal slot. Squeezed running in after work, 2 with Elise on her bike. Hopefully we can make that happen more.

AM: 10 miles back and forth on the Pinellas Bayway bridge. Better pace than last week, but still pretty relaxed. The alarm clock this morning felt like a rock through my window.

PM: 10 miles.

AM: 10 miles, with 4 mile MP tempo at 5:52 avg (5:55, 5:53, 5:53, 5:46). I'm targeting 5:55 as marathon pace at the moment. As training gets more specific, I may tweak that a bit in either direction.

PM: 10 miles at lunch, Clearwater Causeway, over the hump and back again.

AM: 13 miles, 6 w/ the girls to the park, 7 solo. Elise ran .5 with me of her own choosing, which was cool.

PM: 4 miles.

AM: 20 miles, with 1 at 5:56 randomly tossed in. Overslept, so I intercepted the group a mile in. Averaged 7:13.

We faced a deadly dilemma for a family of two girls aged 3 & 6. My wife's friend gave her 2 tickets (Adult/Child) to Disney: Frozen on Ice for today. So only one girl can go. We decided it would be Elise, because primogeniture. Actually, it was even more pragmatic- Anna won't remember it, and her attention span, even for some Frozen boondoggle, is questionable. We have an Open House this afternoon, so Anna and I have to be out. I think we're going to a kiddie movie, where maybe I can grab a nap.

PM: 4 miles. I erred in theater selection and our movie was not playing, but the afternoon was better for it. We ate ice cream and hung out on a playground, having fun/killing time. Short run before throwing together dinner.

AM: 12 miles. I didn't  do any hard running last week, but there were enough medium efforts coupled with my highest mileage week ever that some background aches have moved into the foreground. As usual, it's the left hamstring/glute/hip that becomes a problem when I overdo it.

I'm going to be more disciplined this week about keeping the effort light while trying to maintain good mileage.

PM: 8 miles with Quint, cracked 8:00 pace for the first time today on 2nd to last mile.

AM: 10 slow miles.

PM: 9 miles at track. One thing that has always interested me is how the conscious mind can broadcast a message like "Well, I'll go to track, but it will just be to see my friends and get my miles in." Then you find yourself there, in flats, and well- the high school kids are back with the club now that school is out and the hamstring is feeling pretty good...

It's like there's a shadow mind calling its own shots, but in this case at least it's only requesting intervals.

It also brought to mind an article I read years ago in Running Times by Pete Magill that really cracks me up. I did a quick search and didn't find it, but the gist of the article (almost read like something from The Onion) was that rather than take it easy by default when injured, you should do a workout. The article went on to enumerate certain types of workouts for specific injuries.

It doesn't make me laugh because it's ridiculous to me - I think there's some truth to it - it's just the compulsive mindset that I find funny, and that I can relate to.

Anyway, with that preamble out of the way, here was tonight's workout:

1200, 800, 400, 200, EACH WITH 200 REST, 2 SETS WITH 400 REST BETWEEN     THE SETS

Splits:

1. 4:01, 2:34, 1:15, :32
2. 4:01, 2:38, 1:14, :32

Compared to winter splits, those look lackluster, but the effort level was at least moderately hard for the heat/humidity.

AM: 10 miles.

PM: 10 miles after work with Quint.  Also Richie, who showed us a small squirrel cemetery on the edge of USF St. Pete.

AM: 10 miles, bridge repeats, medium effort.

PM: 7 miles at lunch with Quint.

AM: 10 miles, couple strides.

PM: 13 miles at "lunch", most of it with Quint. When I got back to my car, there was a yellow triangle on my phone with a message letting me know it was ready to detonate unless I got it cooler in there.

AM: 13 miles. 5 with the girls to the park, then 8 solo.

PM: 4 miles.

Final packing of the house this weekend for the move next Saturday.

AM: 24 miles, 6:50 average. Good run overall today, although Richie and I got into it about halfway through, and that cast a shadow.

Richie and Mike G. sometimes meet our Sunday group about 10 miles in. They're both strong runners, so their presence always helps. I told Richie this morning that I was training seriously for TCM, and he renewed his recommendation that I begin receiving online coaching from a friend of his, who runs a prominent American development program based on Canova workouts.

I like Richie very, very much, probably more than he likes me. Our relationship has never been terribly easy though. He bills himself as a New Yorker, and he is loud, brassy and domineering. Underneath that exterior though, is a sensitive guy who needs a very delicate balance of factors to feel validated. This isn't an ideal match for me. I rarely raise my voice, and am generally cordial- but my cool reserve goes deep, and when I argue with people I don't feel anything. It's easy for me to insult people. Not intentionally, and I've gotten better with age, but I have some disconnects.

What really enraged him today is that I told him I didn't need coaching. I know that sounds arrogant, it probably is. I'm not deluded though. Meb is a couple years younger than me, and can run a marathon 30 minutes faster. I wasn't trying to say I am a great runner. I was trying to say I know the path I need to walk.

Like many debates, be they politics, religion, or even running, one conversation often covers another. I tried pointing out to Richie, as he grew increasingly agitated, that we were really debating whether magic workouts exist. For Richie, they absolutely do. He attributes much of his success at Boston to "special blocks", in which you do a hard workout in the morning and another that evening. The theory being that your body is low on fuel reserves, and ..... (fill in scientific mumbo jumbo here) .... and adaptations occur. In seriousness though, I am sure that workout is great for Canova's Kenyan elites, but for a 41 year old father and full-time employee, I feel strongly that the risk of that approach is greater than the reward. As I've mentioned recently, I get injured most when stacking quality too close together, and the higher the mileage, the more caution is needed.

We do have a fundamental disagreement. I don't think there are gatekeepers, or keys, or special workouts. It's not so much that I have the answer- I don't think there's a real question. I think running a good marathon requires a boring, plodding base phase. Then at some point, a few months out, you transition to specific sessions - steady-state runs a bit above and below race pace, wave tempos - most of the things Canova advocates, actually.

And if there is one secret weapon to running, it is consistency. Richie says I'm a narrow minded computer programmer, and X+Y doesn't always = Z. Amusingly, my wife says the same thing. I am narrow minded, and pattern driven. But I still think I'm right. I have to feel that part of Richie's attraction to special workouts can be attributed to his aversion to structured training, which is an extension of his free spirit. His free spirit is one of the things that makes him special. I do think you need to run every day, though, if you want to maximize your potential.

I thought it was an interesting discussion, but Richie was out of sorts. I told him I'd keep tickling him until he got over his mood. Being from California, it's OK for me to do things like that.

AM: 6 miles solo, then 6 to the park with the family.

PM: 9 miles.

AM: 10 miles. We're closing on our house today. I have some nerves, but big picture it will be a great place for our girls to grow up. Yesterday, I found an old DVD of the Smurfs while boxing things up. In the evening, we watched the episode about the Smurf zombie apocalypse. One of the Smurfs gets bitten by a purple bug that turns him into a snarling, hopping rabid Smurf with the sole thought of biting another Smurf's tail (thereby transmitting the plague). We laughed about it, but at bedtime Anna was terrified, and for the first time in ages went to sleep in our bed. There was also a theatrical lightning storm outside.

PM: 10 miles at track. Workout was 5x300, 3 sets, 100 rest between items, 500 between sets.

With temp in the low 90s and dew point in the low 70s, this was more about survival than splits. Averaged 55.

AM: 2 miles. The universe wants me to do other things than run today, but we'll see.

AM: 10 miles, just easy running on the bridge.

PM: 10 miles at lunch with Quint, new route.

I've had a kind of subterranean fatigue circling around me recently, but the walls came crashing in yesterday. It was probably a good thing I had no time to run. I felt like a ghost dragging chains around. Right before the crash though, I had the first glimmers that the recent excessive mileage was starting to click.

Work has been light over the last few weeks, which has allowed me to train my head off. Things are picking back up, so the challenge will be to stay employed and train my head off.

I signed up for a 5k on Father’s Day, partly to mark the transition into specific marathon training, partly because I could get permission.

Tomorrow, the forecast predicts a morning dew point around 65, which probably won’t happen again for 4 months. I’m planning a 10 mile MP tempo, which I would normally do every 2-3 weeks during specific phase. Usually the dew point is pegged out at 75 or worse from June through September, which will make that workout much harder than it should be.

AM: 15 miles, 10 mile MP tempo in 58:56, 5:54 avg. Splits:

1. 5:53
2. 5:57
3. 5:51
4. 5:56
5. 5:53
6. 5:51
7. 5:55
8. 5:55
9. 5:56
10. 5:48

Best running weather I can recall for FL at the end of May. Wish I could say I felt strong today, but it was a grind the whole way. Pace felt about right for where I am in my training. Mentally and physically just exhausted though.

Glad to get my first official TCM workout on the books. It's a good sign to run this workout 4 months out.

PM: 8 miles at lunch with Quint, both of us dragging.

0 miles, but I moved today. That was a lot of exercise.

AM: 22 miles with the group. I parked at my old house, ran downtown & did the usual route, then met the family to clean the place as much as possible. After 10 years in that house, with 2 daughters added into the mix over the years, and myself- not your model homeowner...only so much could be done.

In college I used to get pretty nostalgic moving out of a dorm or appartment I lived in for a year. I'm way too tired for that this time, and when I do think about it, the first image that pops into my mind is heavy machinery and a wrecking ball knocking the walls off that place.