track fan

1:03:11. Easy run to Buffalo Park.  John Ball (our handy dandy ART guy) came up with his son, Jayden, and his wife for the weekend.  Yesterday, I slowly and painfully got out of bed (I could hardly breath) and got ready to run.  Then I took off my shoes because it hurt so bad, then I put them back on ... and repeated this about 5 times throughout the morning.  The whole time John was telling me all the reasons I shouldn't run (had nothing to do with the pain).  Then we compromised, he said, "I will write you a script to get an x-ray at the med center, and if your ribs are not broken, then you can decide to run later".  I thought this sounded good, so I went for a walk with them instead in the morning.  Then, all the runners in Flagstaff (except those that were racing -- Bix run was yesterday, which was the USA 7 mile championship -- Ryan Hall won a car -- though I think he took the money since he is sponsored by Nissan and the car was a Kia -- and Lindsey Allen of McMillan Elite was 5th woman and won $5K!! yea Lindsey) came over so John could work on them.  He set up shop on the porch and we had a steady stream of people all day.  Alicia Shay brought brownies and everyone seemed content (I did not have one since by about 3PM I had given up on running).  I did get an x-ray but either they did not read it yesterday or they were not fractured, because they never called John. Then last night we went out to a great Thai restaurant (Fasil Bizuneh came along too, he and John ran at Arizona State together way back when) -- it was great.

I feel a little better today, my face looks horrible but what the hey, I still can't roll over on my right side without screaming but I am moving much better than yesterday.  So, I decided to try a run.  It basically feels like I am running with a constant side-stitch that won't go away, but it only brought tears to my eyes when I breath hard or go downhill.  I ran over to Buffalo Park and it was fine as long as I ran slow and did need to breath hard at all.  Apparently the pace that I can essentially run with my nose and not my mouth (which is my poor womans guide to heart rate and effort)  is 9:05 on the hills and about 8:55 on the flats.   I am icing my poor ribs/muscles now, but I am convinced that nothing is broken, just bruised.  So, I am hoping it will heal in a couple of weeks (or even faster if I don't overdo it)  ... For now, I am just happy to run at all.  Side-stitch level pain is ok  ;-).

I hope you all have a wonderful rest of the weekend, CONGRATS to all of you on your impressive races this weekend!!  Allie just rocked her marathon, and man oh man you people who ran Des News have posted some amazing race times!!  I hope I can catch up on your blogs next week (as soon as I finish getting my students poster done and this one last grant finished up).

 Just a little update from the "Flagstaff contingent"

BIG congrats to McMillan Athletes Lindsey Allen (5th at Bix - USA 7 mile championship), Ian Burrell (6th) and Andrew Carlson (9th).  Huge 3rd place to Stephanie Rothstein at the Wharf to Wharf race this morning in Santa Cruz (31:43 for the 6 mile race) -- she was the first American and missed 2nd place by 10 seconds!!  More impressive, this was her first race back after 13 months and she is not even in race shape yet!!  Expect big things for her going into her marathon debut this year!  Finally, Kelly Liljeblad (coach for McMillan Running) is currently in 5th place at the Ironman Lake Placid!! She was 6th coming off the bike, and since she is a 2:31 marathoner, the run is her strongest event - early in the marathon she has overtaken the 5th place female and might be on her way for a top 3 finish if she runs as strong as she has in the past!!  wow! (UPDATE, Kelly got 5th. she struggled at the end, but still had a great showing!)

AM: (10 miles, 1:30:17). I don't want to miss any more of these awesome days ... so I ran on the "infamous" Fort Valley Trail -- I did not quite get to the scene of the "accident" because I ran from the house (on the Lower Oldham trail).  I was nervous about running on these trails, but my face aside, this trail is one of the easiest around here ... so, I got back on the horse/bike/whatever.  It still feels like I have a serious side-stitch, but since it is not really a "running" injury, it does not hurt any more while I am running (though it does hurt quite a bit afterwards) and I don't think I am doing any more damage -- it is mainly about how much pain can I take to run -- and I have a pretty high pain threshold.  Especially when my legs want to go faster and farther because they are so fresh.

PM: (I really really hope to be able to do 4 easy tonight unless the pain gets worse than it is right now).

 Another busy day -- one draft of a grant almost finished, another needs to be done by this weekend -- and then we are on our way to the big stat conference in Vancouver next week.  I also have many lunch dates ... bye-lunches.  So sad.

I hope you are all doing well!!  Run happy!

1:00:01. + at least .5 mile chasing horses off the the trail so the elites could do their workout.  hmmmmm.  Apparently my "bonnie mile" estimated pace of 9:00/mile is a little off.  This is a marked trail and I ran 5.5 on the trail in 46:48 + 13:12 from the house to the park (which I think is about 1.5 miles).  Interesting.  Anyway -- on with the story.  Today was an easy day for me, and I wanted to watch the group workout.  So I ran to the park and did a couple of laps slow and then saw them race by me for their first lap (some people were doing 4 miles at threshold, others were doing 10).  On my 2nd lap I noticed some horses that seemed to have escaped from someones property.  They were trail horses, so they enjoyed standing right in the middle of the trail ... I knew that the fastest runners were going to be going about 5:15 pace, so it wasn't going to be good if they had to navigate around these huge horses.  So I ran down to where they were and pushed, prodded and pulled them off of the trail.  The guys flew by.  Then Jamie and I stayed there for their 3rd lap too (I thought they were all doing 6 miles so I thought we were done) and then we jogged back to the start.  Well, 3 of the guys (Olympian Andrew Lemmoncello, Fasil and Nick Arciniaga) were running 10 miles (5 laps) and on their 4th lap they yelled that the horses had been right in the middle of the trail.  So, I ran over and moved them again, and stayed there until they came by for their 5th, and final, lap (in 5:00 pace).  They looked good!!!

 Many of you bloggers read this on my FB yesterday, but I will tell everyone.  I tied for 1st place in the LetsRun Prediction Contest for the Paris track and field meet (there was $20, 010 on the line sponsored by Puma -- we picked 1st/2nd/3rd place for a few select events - including field events - I got the Women's high jump completely correct for all 3 places, along with the Mens Steeplechase, M 800 meter, M 100m - the Women's 1500 was my downfall). Unfortunately, rather than split the money they had a tie-breaker (I think there were actually 3-4 of us tied for 1st) and the winner was the person who had correctly guessed the highest number of 1st place winners.  I missed out on $20K by about 2 picks!!! I had guess more 1-2-3 than the winner, but he had more 1st places overall (I don't think he had any 1-2-3s!).  WOW.  Anyway Wejo (the owner of LetsRun) is going to see if Puma will at least give us some swag for coming so close!! Cool eh?  Wejo wanted to know what my strategy was ... ha ha ha.  I said, "I read Track and Field News every month, watch every track meet on TV or on my computer and am a fan ... ".  I also told him rather than swag I wanted "quote of the day" -- but I need to think of something good to say ;-) ... I don't know if he is going to give it to me ;-).

I hope you are all doing well bloggers!!

My chest still hurts, but it does not hurt any more today after yesterday, so I think I am going to try a workout tomorrow.

AM:(9.5 miles, 1:22:12).  23:51wu/17:59 cd + 5 x 5` w/3` recovery.  I could only get "exact" 1/2 mile splits for 3 of these just because of the way the mile markers were situated in relation to my stop and start.  The first one was way too fast at 7:05 pace (altitude adjusted about 6:50 pace), I slowed down on the second one, because I was trying but also because it has the steep hill - 7:50 pace, the 4th one was better @ 7:20 pace (I am pretty sure the 3rd one was this pace too, it was a much easier effort than the first one); I have no idea about the 5th one, though I hit the 1/4 in 1:45 so it might have been too fast as well.  All and all I was pleased with the effort, especially at 7500 ft and with all the hills.  I felt relatively 'acclimated' to the altitude and my ribs only really ached on my cool down -- and now after I have stopped.

There were some of the men's Northern Arizona University team at Buffalo Park today, they weren't as fast as the elites from yesterday (since they had 2 Olympians) - but they were cooking nonetheless! 

Now I have to finish packing up the car for the drive home.  Hopefully, if all goes well, we will be home in enough time for me to pick up Keiko's (the Ridgeback dog's) prescription, get dog food for their kenneling starting tomorrow, and still make it home in time for an easy 4 miles.  We will be traveling on Saturday so I will miss my PM run, I am hoping to get an extra 4 in tomorrow instead, especially since I missed my long run last weekend.  Sunday I will do my long run at Stanley and Spirit Parks - should be nice.  By the time I get back home and do my first workout back in Tucson Greg says I will feel like a  million bucks and my workout should be better than I have ever done  (we'll see, I am skeptical but ever trusting in my coach!).

Have a wonderful day bloggers!!

AM: (7, 1:05:26).  A little longer than 7 miles, but not quite 7.5.  My legs feel like cement today.  Funny.  I thought I was running at about 10 min pace, but I timed my last couple of miles (based on a street as a landmark) and I was running what I always run for that section.  Lungs were happy to have so much Oxygen, but legs are just plain dead.  We had a tough drive home yesterday.  It rained (actually there were flash flood alerts all the way from Flagstaff through Phoenix, the emergency warning system kept interrupting radio broadcasts).  It took us nearly 3 hours just to inch through the Phoenix area, so what is normally a 4 hour drive was at least 6, I barely made it home in time to run last night. My ribs are killing me today, I don't know if it from my run yesterday or just sitting in a car all day, but ouch, it is almost like last weekend again, except a little more localized (last week my entire side hurt, now it seems to hurt in one specific place).  Anyway ... I still hope to sneak a run in this evening.

PM: (easy 4).

We have to unpack and repack, we are leaving tomorrow for Vancouver.  We are just "jet-setters" ;-).

Have a great Friday and weekend bloggers! 

1:12:56. A little better than yesterday, but my legs just feel dead lately. It is humid here because of the monsoons ... I like it, even though I get super sticky. I like 80F and 70% humidity better than 100+ any day, dry or not. Have to finish packing ... I bought a new battery for my notebook computer, so now I have ~ 9 hours of battery time between the two batteries (one 4-cell and one 9-cell), so I can can work on both of my flights without charging up ... yeah!

8 days post "big fall" and I still can't: 1) take a deep breath, 2) lay on my right side or 3) get up out of a chair without wincing  -- but my face is healing up nicely, hopefully people will quit looking at Dean suspiciously ;-)  

Have a great weekend bloggers!