Bret

AM - 4 miles easy.

AM - around 13 miles with Richie in St. Pete this morning.  Super humid of course.  Good run though.

AM - 3.5 miles very easy before church.  

AM - 5 miles moderate to fast-paced before hitting the road to head back to ATL.  

AM - 3 miles with Finn before work - Business travel this afternoon through the end of the week.

PM - 4 more miles on the treadmill at the hotel in Vegas before a reception event.

AM - 7.5 miles in Vegas - on the strip.  

AM - 8.5 miles this morning along some roads near the strip.  

AM - just under 7.5 miles in Vegas before my flight home. 

AM - 5 miles easy back at home.

PM - 4.25 miles with Finn - quick. 

No running today.  I was tired early - and had planned to run later in the day - but the weather got a bit ugly - and I did not feel like a treadmill run.  Decided to take a day off.

PM - 5.25 miles at lunchtime around the neighborhoods near my office in Sandy Springs. Had to turn around on one street which was blocked by a fallen tree and there was a police car stationed in front of it.  Lots of debris and downed trees and branches - but nothing too major to report.

AM - easy run with Finn before work - just under 3 miles.  Foot is achy.

PM - lunchtime - a little over 3 miles - quick after a 1 mile warm up.   Turned my ankle/foot on some Irma debris on the sidewalk - probably a pine cone (grrr).  Same foot that was achy this morning. 

PM - I ran well today.  Start off planning to run easy if the foot hurt or if I did not feel great - but it all worked out and I ran the last 5 of the 7 total miles at a tempo pace on a hilly course.  Good effort. 

AM - 4.25 easy miles with Finn in the neighborhood.  

PM - just short of 9 miles with Finn exploring some areas near my house and on the golf course.  

No running - busy day and travel to Florida for a conference. 

AM - 5 miles around the golf course and hotel property in Orlando.  Humid/high dew point as expected. 

Early, early wake up call for a flight back to ATL for work and presentations.  No running.

AM - 3 miles with Finn around the neighborhood.  Low light miles this week ahead of a marathon this weekend.  Heading to Berlin tomorrow.  

AM - easy run with Finn - travel later today overnight to Germany. 

PM - 3 mile or so walk to the Expo in Berlin and backto the hotel.  

AM - 3.5 miles - shake-out exploratory run from the hotel to the finish and start area for Berlin.

Berlin Marathon -  Not a great result today for me.  But I was pleased that I soldiered through a bit of an off day and finished relatively strong.  (Sept 25) After writing the below entry yesterday - based upon the reports of the leaders - I think I can attribute at least part of my difficulty to the sticky humid conditions.  It did not really dawn on me because the temps were much cooler than in ATL - but humidity was 99%.  

Weather conditions were wet/sloppy, cool and humid.  Temps in the upper 50's at the start.  It had rained steadily all night and in the morning it was foggy/misty with periods of light rain even in the race.  So the streets were quite wet and my shoes and socks were soaked by the end.  

Had a hard time with sleeping the night before.  I was tired around 8 pm local time and fell asleep only to be awakened by the thumping of some dance club nearby the hotel around 11:30 pm and then could not get back to sleep for about 2 hours.  So I slept in shifts or intervals. 

Hotel was within relatively easy walking distance to the start and finish which are pretty close to each other.  

Not really sure what happened to me today.  I felt a bit flat and never felt comfortable for most of the early miles.  I even suddenly started wretching around mile 7 as if I was going to throw-up; but that passed without any production thankfully.

Knowing I was not at my best - I decided to simply run by using my HR monitor in order to keep my pace in an aerobic HR range (top of the range unfortunately)-  to try to "consolidate my losses" as they say, and not completely blow-up by attempting to force things.  I went from running around 7:40 pace for the first 4-5 miles or so, to running 8's and the 8:10's and then even had a few 8:40's.  I would feel decent for a mile or so, and then feel bad again so my pacing was somewhat up and down but not with huge swings.  

Some interesting items of note about this race.  This marathon had only kilometers marked, as it is in Germany (I don't recall when running in Paris or London if they only marked k's or had some mile markers too) - with no mile markers at all.   No worries, my Garmin kept track with autolaps at every mile.  Water was sporadic at maybe every 3 to 4k in flimsy platic cups.  Picture thousands of those plastic cups on wet streets.  Most volunteers did not hand out water, so you had to pick it up yourself from the table.   That caused some crowding - and I even had someone bump into my watch at one of them, which inadvertantly recorded lap between mile 17 and 18.  There were maybe 2 stations in the entire race where I think they had the equivalent to a sports drink - otherwise it was tea.  The sports drink was very sugary and did not sit well with my already bad stomach.   Oh yeah, in the last 5k they had a special station for drinks which was Red Bull.  Odd. 

Anyway - the race did not get completely away from me and in the last 5k when the 3:30 pacers came upon me, I decided to not let them finish in front of me - so my last few miles were actually back to sub 8's.  Turns out the pacers started perhaps a little further back than I did at the start - or maybe they were slow today too because although I finished in front of them, my time was not sub-3:30.

Postitives:  I pushed through on an "off-day" in slightly less than ideal conditions and did not do too badly.  I finished strongly.  I last ran this race 10 years ago when I was in really poor marathon shape - and so I bested my younger self by over 30 mins.  In the official results my range of pace by 5k was an average 4:50 ppk (in the first 5k) to a high of 5:23 ppk (at 35k) -  which is less than a 30 secs per k range; with the last 5k at an average of 5:08 ppk.

no running - full day of travel returning from Berlin.

AM - did an 2 easy miles this morning.  Actually was surprised at how limited the soreness and fatigue has been post race.  In retrospect, I suppose I really ran about 23 of the miles completely aerobically - and the last 5k was more like a fast finish long run workout.  Plus the race course is pancake flat. So - I did not get a huge amount of lactic acid or extended muscle strain from the event that I might have had, if I had been less conservative. I had decent hydration in the race, nice recovery stretching and food afterwards, and then sat on a plane resting my legs the next day for about 10 hours.  I suspect there will be some lingering fatigue - so I will take it mostly easy this week to allow for full recovery. 

AM - 3 miles with Finn around the neighborhood before work.

AM - not a great start to the day.  Awoke with a sore throat.  Decided to go for a run anyway - took a tumble on a sidewalk in the neighborhood - lost some skin on my hands.  Could have been much worse though beccause I let go of Finn's leash when I fell and he ran out into the road - and there was a car approaching.  Fortunately - my head lamp and so forth was seen by the driver in enough time for me to get the dog out of the road safely.  

Ran a 5k race in ATL this morning with 2 of my daughters and future son-in-law Marcus. Riley stayed back to run with Bradlea and I ran along with Marcus.  He kept it at 8 min pace - but suddenly at like less than a half mile left - he thought he was going to throw-up - so we stopped for about 90 seconds and then it passed.  Finished inside the new Mercedes-Benz Stadium - which was pretty cool.