The sun is up, the air is fresh, the stone is old

Hung out at Alta with the Murphy clan, went to the best damn breakfast place there is, then picked up some kayaks for our rental company and spent the afternoon teaching the kids how to kayak. Awesome day. The second Sunday that Rob has been an evil influence upon me to skip church. Since I am spending the time converting him, I think forgiveness is in the works..

Interesting to note the advantage I pull on the downhill courses.  According to Sashas calculator using my Alta time of 22:23, I should be able to run the Utah marathons at 2:30 or below right now and about a 1:08 to 1:10 half.  Not doing that right now.   

Most miserable run experience in a while.  Taped up my feet to get in a run and the blisters just tore all over the place.  What a mess.  I gave up on it and figured they would heal anyway like blisters normally do, except these are on my heels, basically are my heels.  After 1 mile I got a splitting headache right behind my eye.  It would stop when I stopped running but immediately start up again when I started back up.  So I had to run with it for an hour.  When I got back and stopped it dissappeared.  Weirdest headache ever.  Add all that together with the sore legs from Saturday and it was a good time.

Huntington Beach, CA tonight for a sweet run.  I borrowed some tape from the plane today for my feet.  It appears to be some kind of medical duct tape.  I covered the bottoms of my feet and wow, what a difference.  When I got back to the hotel it had not even budged.  It was even hard to tear off of my soles.  I think I can plan on running a marathon with this stuff.  I'm pretty encouraged about a quick recovery from Saturday.  I had my doubts for the last few days. 

So after some wavering, I'm going to hit the TOU Marathon as my only 26 mile training run before Twin Cities Marathon October 2nd.

Easy relaxed day flying three coast to coast legs.  Not much time to get in a run and not worrying about it.  Sweet to have internet access all day while moving 600 miles an hor across the country.  I wish all of our planes had this.  It literally does not feel like a job at all.

I've made it halfway through a training book on Lydiard's methods and it's neat to see what has worked in my training and what I have done wrong.  The most interesting are the parts that have taken me a while to come up with on my own and then read them already put down years ago by this coach.

At the start of this year several family members begged me to run the TOU marathon with them next week and paid the sign up fees.  They were joined by 4 other friends and they all started "training".  This week the last of them called to say they were dropping out.  Out of 7 people, not one would train through to run a marathon.  One friend told me that she just couldn't believe the effort it took.  She wasn't going to run the thing simply because of the work to get ready for it.  My own son, after getting up to 8 mile runs, just flat out stopped two months ago.  It was like he just couldn't understand that you had to stay with something for so long and he really wanted this.  (His girlfriend is running it).  The effort in life to do something physical was just too much.  It's curious to me because I think it reflects a huge general trend in society right now.  We should be given things, or recognition; we just deserve them.  For the first time in 17 years flying that I can remember, I will have teenagers come up to the cockpit for a tour and ask how to get a job like this, and when I explain that it's no big deal, you just have to stay in school, get a college degree and spend two years getting your ratings, the excitement just fades.  They literally lose interest in a few minutes.  And it's so damn easy to do.  Almost anything in life worth getting at all takes weeks, months and years of work.  Check out the marathon scene.  Marathoning and half marathoning are more popular than ever, some sell out in a few days.  So you'd think we are faster and more dedicated to what it takes to run, but the average time to finish one is steadily increasing.  Maybe it's just my experience, but none of these friends and family that have dropped out had any injuries, they just didn't want to train.  They just wanted to go run one.  My son asked yesterday how to get ready race morning, he was still planning on running the marathon in four days.  I told him no way he was going to run it unless he trained for it.  It was basically trying to show him that you don't do something that you won't work for.  It was an hour long discussion, but I think he understands a little more about it. 

This spring I had a hard time explaining to my neighbor why my daughter would not be on the soccer team this year.  They just changed to a "no scoring" status since it's better for the kids.  I didn't do a very good job of explaining why sports and competition are so critical to education and to life so it's been on my mind a few times this summer.   

Easy jog in Nashville this morning along the river trail.  I had a few minutes this morning to review some race numbers for the year which I have been meaning to do for a while.  I've had a lot going on this year so running has had a "hobby" place instead of part of my life as it would be nice to have.  Also I've been running at 160 lbs all year which is a good 10 lbs higher than last year and that has surely had a negative effect.  I just havn't felt in gear for the season.  So I was surprised looking at Athlinks stat profiles that I've set PRs in the 5k, 8k, 10k, 15k and Half Marathon this year.  Every distance except the marathon.  Now I've only been running again really for three years, but that's a lot for one year.  I've also been without a single significant injury so what's the difference?

The main change I've made this year was late December last year coming off an Achilles tendon injury by increasing slow long runs consistently in an effort to get through it.  I spent several months on aerobic base and just let races fall in if they did.  If I felt something flare up from a race, instead of rest I put in the miles, but at a slower pace.  Seems to work for me.  I've also put in some real hill training.  There has not been a whole lot of interval training at all.  It looks like the aerobic base has been the difference and some of the information I'm getting from some new (at least to me) Lydiard training methods is the importance of a solid aerobic base for ANY distance.  I'm going to spend some time this week looking at some adjustments to my future training plans. 

Easy, beautiful run along the Grand River in Grand Rapids this morning.  Pretty sore from that Alta race still and wondering what that means for tomorrow.  At least it seems like simply soreness and not fatigue.

I ran the TOU this morning even though my legs still felt pretty iffy from Saturday.  I had decided to not push it if I felt it would destroy any chances I have of running a decent marathon at Twin in two weeks.  Instead of finishing at any cost, my plan was to hold marathon pace for as long as I could and call it a day.  I could tell by mile three that I had to make a decision and it was hard.  It took me until mile 11 to decide to drop out, 5:47 average pace.  My legs hurt like crazy, but I wasn't winded at all, so hopefully I can get some rest and gear up again.  It was really neat to cheer everybody on, I havn't done that for a while.  I need to get out and do some volunteering.