Clyde's Comeback!

Decide Saturday to go on a little camping trip up in the Fishlake national forest in the Last Chance area. Just a solo outing to go mellow out and workout some internal issues. Drove up and arrived late Saturday night. Slept like crap. Up about every 35 min's. But Sunday ended up being AMAZING. Did a short scoutiing hike early morning. Then came back to the car and did a 6.1 mile run down on the main road and up some other dirt road. Just felt good to shake the legs. Kept the pace super chill. After that I had breakfast and tried to nap for an hour or so before doing a longer hike out looking for treasures. It was a good day. Drove home without having to stop for a potty break.

Felt almost FANTASTIC for a Monday. I wont read into it much farther than the letter "F" that fantastic begins with. But things felt right. Kept it EZ and just tried to work on form a little. HIps square with shoulders, knees, arms, feet. Kept the stride short and bouncy. MOJO is on the rise.

146 lbs. Glad to see the weight low... and on a Monday.

6 miles on the treadmill this afternoon. Feeling pretty relaxed and smooth. We'll see how a short tempo goes in the morning.

Big workout. Last tempo before PHX.

4.7 mile warm up

5 mile tempo

3.5 or so cool down

 Splits- 5:00, 5:21, 5:33, 5:36, 5:38

So today kind of sucked.... bad. I had bad stomach issues that started around mile 3. Maybe even a little before. Forced me to stop the tempo and go into Maverick for a potty stop at 3.8 miles into the run. So the last 3 miles of the BIG 5 mile tempo were all jacked up. Oh well. I tried to figure out why my stomach got so jacked up while we ran back on the cool down. My original conclusion was that I'd eaten 2 blood oranges and an apple right before bed. Not the best idea but they all tasted soo good that I couldn't stop. But then after re thinking it. Today before running I decided NOT to take my Imodium pill. I didn't forget to take it. I just thought "it's only 5 miles of tempo this morning". I don't need it. That proved to be false. I've been taking them before all big long runs and tempo workouts. And I feel it helps big time. So note to self. Just take them... always.

Anyways ended the 5 miles at a 5:27 avg which isn't bad considering I really only tempoed 2 of those miles. Got out a little too fast but I knew that would happen with this being a shorter workout.

Now I'm ready to really dive right into a good taper. Relax the mind and body and let what happens happen in P'town this weekend.

146 lbs again after the run. And 5 star morning. :)

Inner B-hills extended through the secret street. Just a regular old taper run. Nothing too awesome to report. Calves are carring some extra knots in them... awsome. I decided that I'll stay off the scale the rest of the week. My weight was down both Monday and Tuesday so from here on out all it'll do is stress me. Guess I'll be what I'll be. No all you can eat outings planned between now and then. If there was any magicall marathon fairy god princess thing out there. Let her tap me on the head three times with her wand. Let the stars line up. Let the mind and soul be at peace. And let the legs and body work like they have in training runs the last two months. ineedthismutha

4 ez on the treadmill. Woke up yesterday with a fever and body aches. Tried to play it off all day and was busy with lots to do... but by the end of the day I could hardly stand up. Super chilly, dizzy and achy. So that sucks. In bed all night with same. plus lots of external drama. FML.

I know I've done the work. Logged the miles. and am ready to run a great marathon. But I just have had this feeling through this whole training phase that somehow things would get all jacked up. It seems I just cannot out run the demons who want to slay me.

Anyways I got on the machine today for 4 miles or a little over a half hour. Just long enough to get super sweaty and dizzy. Weight was high too. Awesome.

Nice chill run with the Circle up a cannal trail in PHX. It was only a block or so from our hotel which was nice. Temps were warmer at around 52 F or so for the morning hours. But it felt great. Left the room shirtless. I finally started to feel like the fever was gone and feeling a little better than earlier this week.
 

Well I haven't been looking forward to writing this report. Bottom line is I messed this race up 3 weeks ago on a 25 mile training run with 10 miles at sub 5 min pace. I haven't felt the same since. Haven't ran close to that since and just wasn't recovered. Dumb to have done that...  sucks to live out the consequences. But thats really what happened. FACT. So with that and the sickness I've had the last few days. I just knew today wasn't going to be good. I tried to be positive and do the best I could. But I knew it wasn't going to be the day...

All that said I ran my best effort for the day.

Hung out at the start for about 45 min's. We just sat there at the gun range listenting to the most annyoing announcer ever. The guy was off the hook crazy. Then I put my hand in a prickly pear while hitting up a potty stop. And a few min's befor the gun went off it started to rain. Like a downpour at the time. Awesome. And the rain ended up being great. It was just the wind that really sucked the life out of me.

Decided to go out strong but not out of control. Stayed right with the Ogden boys for the first 5 miles then fell off them about 10 seconds climbing the hills. Then they started to hammer the downhill at around mile 7 and I was now running in 4th and would basically stay right there the rest of the race. Or 5th depending on what really happened.

Mile splits. 5:33, 5:19, 5:28, 5:18, 5:39, 5:49, 5:22, 5:27,5:28, 5:30, 5:33, 5:36, 5:45, 5:41, 5:35, 5:38, 5:51, 5:59, 5:57, 5:55, 5:45, 5:51, 5:58, 5:57, 5:53, 5:51 .2 @ 5:47

Hit the half in around 1:12:20

Had the course at 26.33

So I didn't ever ever ever feel good today. The first 10 or so felt ok. Like "I'm in a race the effort is harder but ok". But never felt like "Bang- Legs go baby". Then after mile 11 or so I really started to just "grind". Like I knew I'd possibly hit a wall or struggle... typical marathon stuff. But that happens at like mile 20 or 23. Not 11 or 12. From then on I just could not race. Miles 11-20 were so pathetically crappy I just about walked off the course. At 17 I was so frustrated that I decided to stop. But I could see the course turning  up a head and decided to push on to the next corner and see if changing directions might help. It kind of did but not much. The wind was an issue as well. Just slowed the pace and bugged the brain. After around mile 18 I just decided to not DNF even though I knew it wasn't going to be the race I'd trained for. So I said to myself. Just hit 6 min pace from here on in and at least you'll break 2:30. So that's basically what I did. Semi happy about that. My only real goal was to break 2:30 although my mileage, workouts and even the half marathon in January would all suggest I have a better race in me. But.... Oh well.  In the end I'm glad I didn't drop out. Even though I was so close. Like one step away from stopping. My splits are just all over the place. I never really did hit the wall or die. I just couldn't race anymore. And it turned into a long painful workout/ long run. I really love to train. I love hitting it everyday and pushing myself to the brink. I love seeing progress and feeling super fit. But I hate racing. I hate expectations that I put on myself and the disappointment of not reaching them. I've been in good shape before. I feel like through this winter I've been in great shape. I feel like I have a super race in me.... it's just so hard for me to boil that sucker out. I'm getting sick of trying. But I cant stop because I know it's in there... so the beat goes on I guess.

Thanks to my good friends for the trip down. I've logged thousands of miles with Dave and Logan. We are all getting old. Racing is hard on old men. But we keep smiling.