I only run on days that end in a "y."

Blustery, cold (30's) and raining when I woke up.  I really wanted to go down to Town Lake trail to run some miles on a soft surface.  I looked at radar and it appearred that most of the showers had moved on.  I had contemplated going to the indoor track. I don't mind cold but wet cold is another story. Then I thought of Dan running out in the snow and cold.  So I said to myself, "what the heck - I will go!"  I put on a base layer, hoodie and shorts.  I wore a jacket for the first mile but had wrap it around my waist as it was too warm.

Fortunately, the rain had pretty much died off by the time I hit the trail - a little wind and cold but no biggie.  I had to jump over a few small branches which had fallen on the trail and dodge some mega puddles.  It all adds to the joy of running, IMO.

I ran 9 miles - 7.5 around 7:50 - 8:10's and the last 1.5 @ 7:30 pace.  Legs a bit sore from yesterday's strength training session.  I think that will be the last hard session until after the marathon.

17 degrees and wind chill of 0.  Three 3 base layer shirts, tights, and a hoodie - it actually was not too bad except for the wind at certain points.  The only thing uncomfortable was my cheeks.  I don't have a balaclava but if I did I could have run a long run and been quite comfortable.  6 miles at recovery pace - 8:40's over all average, though I did the last couple a bit faster -  I wanted to get home and have some hot coffee and a hot shower.  

Keeping my miles low this week - shooting for 45-50 for the week.

This morning I dropped my daughter off to her pre-school that had no power.  They were caught in the mandatory blackouts going on across the state.  I guess too many people woke up cold and decided to max out their heater.  The school did not call me back to come get her so the power must have been restored.

It was another cold one - 20 degrees with wind chill around 5 degrees or so.  It did not seem as bad as yesterday but it was still chilly. 

Three of us were going to meet up and run 7-8 miles with 4 miles tempo.  One runner dropped out due to family issues so that left me and another runner who had just run the 3M half marathon on Sunday.  So her legs were not up to a hard tempo.  At that point I knew I would be running the tempo miles on my own.  We ran a couple miles warm-up and then I took off. The first 1.5 miles consisted of rolling hills. At the end of 4 miles I felt so good I added on another mile.  Close to a mile cool down afterward.  I don't remember running as well as I have over the last couple of weeks at anytime during the last 3 years.  The miles came quite easily to me this morning.

Tempo splits:   6:40, 6:37, 6:30, 6:26, 6:27.

Snow and ice day in Austin - it pretty much shut down the city until around noon time.  I knew my daughter's pre-school was cancelled and my son's school had at least a 2 hour delay, so I was able to sleep in.  9 1/2 hours of great sleep!  I also took a quick nap this afternoon.  My body is thankful for the downtime.  Wow - I did not run and I survived.  LOL. 

16 miles with 6-8 @ MGP on the schedule for tomorrow.

Wonderful morning - a bit cool  to start - high 20's - but once the sun broke it warmed up nicely.

We did 16 miles with 9 @ MGP.  I tried to push the last 2 a bit.  Overall good run.  

Splits: 9:14, 7:56, 7:58, 7:44, 7:57, 7:45, 7:45, 7:36, 7:36, 7:29, 7:25, 7:29, 7:22, 7:08, 6:55, 7:03, last .4 @ 7:00.

First I was going to run 6 miles, and then 7, and at 6.5 I decided to run some 100m striders so I finished with 8 miles.  Ran them all on the soft pathway around the small lake near the office. I estimated 100m and did not do a very good job - more like 400 feet.  6 x 100m @ 6:20 - 5:50 pace. Easy miles 8:10-8:20 pace.

Nice crisp morning - low 30's. Met up with 4 others to run this traditional pre-marathon workout.  I think it is one of my favorite workouts.  We ran the 11 mile Town Lake trail loop.  Part of the trail was closed and the detour added another half mile.  Anyway, the workout consisted of 3 mile warm up followed by 20 minutes @ MGP, 2 minutes easy, followed by 10 minutes @ HMP, 2 minutes easy followed by 5 minutes @ 10k pace, 1 minute easy, followed by 5 minutes @ 10k pace, one minute easy, followed by 5 x 1 minute @ 5k pace with 1 minute easy between each, with half mile cool down at the end.  

MGP pace: 20 minutes @ 7:20 pace

HMP pace: 10 minutes @ 6:45 pace

10k pace: 5 minutes @ 6:35 pace, 5 minutes @ 6:29 pace.

5k pace: 1 minutes @  6:17, 6:04, 6:05, 5:59, 5:50.

Decided to do some cross training today - 45 minutes on the stationary bike. 

Cold - 20 degrees and windy.  Met the group and ran to the track for some 800 repeats to get in some good turnover - did not go all out but it was a good effort.  Ran 200m active recovery in between each - 2.5 cool down.  Sprinted the last 100m of the last one - could not overtake my running partner but hung with him - but hey, he's only 22 and a bit of a lead that I had to make up. :-)

800 splits: 3:17, 3:12, 3:07, 3:05, 3:03, 2:58, 2:59, 2:45.

I came upon this Dr.'s website by chance.  He as a lot of very interesting articles as it relates to running and training. Everything he speaks of has been researched and studied.

 Here is one little blurb about how intervals increase both speed and endurance: 

http://drmirkin.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2010-11-11T18%3A18%3A00-05%3A00&max-results=7

"Going out and exercising slowly over long distances will not give you much endurance unless you also exercise intensely once or twice a week at much shorter distances. A person can run a marathon or ride a bicycle century much faster by training fast two or more times a week. The most common mistake made by endurance athletes is to exercise so much that they can't maintain their speed training on their hard interval days. This is often seen in runners or cyclists who perform so many miles per week that their fast workouts end up much slower than they should be."

Beautiful morning.  There was a pre-run meeting about Austin marathon strategies.  The weather as of now does not look that promising but we will see how the week progresses.

Just a short run on the Town Lake trail.  Not much to be gained at this point.  Picked it up at the end for a strong finish - ran the last quarter at around 5:25 pace.

 8:59, 8:24, 7:51, 7:57, 7:37, 7:32, 7:19, 7:11, 7:13, 6:50, .6 @ 5:58.

Met up with a couple runners and we did ran a few easy miles with 2.5 @ MGP and then a cool down.  

high 50's and high humidity - easy/recovery pace miles.  Not happy with the weather at all.  I was warm and covered in sweat when I got back at home.  Prediction for race day is 60 degrees and humid at the start.  Wondering if I should go up to Ft. Worth for the Cow Town marathon the following week.  Extended forecasts show a cold front moving in and that it would probably be around 40 degrees at the start.  Hmmm.

Had another run in with the neighborhood skunk - this time on the corner one house away from mine.  I ran fast and on the other side of the road and he still had his tail up.  Fortunately, his backside was facing away from me.

5 easy/recovery miles this morning.  

Could smell the skunk coming down the hill towards my house.  I think I need to come up with another route.

Stayed near the home and ran easy to the track followed by 4 x 400m @ 5k pace and 1 x 200m @ sub 5K pace.  Cooled down around the track and one mile back home.  Last part @ MGP - 7:15 pace which felt good.

Still - 66 degrees this morning.  I know my body does not tolerate heat that well.  At this point I have no idea what I am going to do about the marathon on Sunday.

I have decided to skip the Austin marathon and shot for the Cow Town marathon in Ft. Worth one week later.  I know that my body type does not do well in warmer weather.  It is not so much the 63-65 degrees at start that bother me as much as the 90% humidity that is forecast.  I know my body will start to overheat in those conditions over 26 miles.  It was a tough decision.  We will soon find out if I made the right choice or not.  

Anyway, I am going to run the Austin half marathon as a training run with some miles @ MGP. 

I ran this afternoon and it was 78 degrees but only 50% humidity.  My heart rate was pretty high during the 5 k paced stuff - I don't know what it was but it felt close to max at times.  I mean, a couple weeks ago I ran a 5 mile tempo run in the 6:30's - 6:20's no problem at all when it was in the 20's. 

Anyway, I ran 1.6 easy followed by 6 x 1 min @ 5k pace with 1 min recovery pace in between when the laps database on my watch filled up.  I had to stop and delete the old laps and then I set the fast time for 1:30 and 1:00 recovery pace and did 10 sets of those @ 5k pace with a bit of a cool down afterward. 

OK - so I met up with 3 others doing the full and half tomorrow.  They are all doing the Aussie carb load plan.  Did some easy miles followed by 1000m @ 3:15 followed by serious carb loading.  Even though I am only doing the 1/2 tomorrow I want to go through this exersice today anyway.  I am going to count tomorrow's mileage onto this weeks and then from M-F next week run 20-25.  That would put me back close to 50 this week. 

It was warm - 64 degrees at the start, humidity at 75-80% - and a hilly, tough course to boot.  I had pretty much told myself I would run 13 as a training run and drive up to Ft. Worth next Sunday for a chance at better conditions and a better course.  Still, I prepared for running the full just in case the conditions were not too bad.  I did the Aussie carb load plan on Saturday and had packed enough blocks and gu's with me Sunday morning.  I loaded up with electrolytes all day Saturday and then Sunday morning.

A runner from our group had offered to give a couple of us a ride to the start.  While driving to his house and about a mile away I saw a runner and thought "who the heck is that out here at this time?" It was another runner from our group who was going to pace a friend.  She was running to the same place I was driving.  I stopped and picked her up and on the short drive she told me to just run with no pressure as I had a back up plan.  Run to 13 or 14 and if I felt like a million bucks to keep going.  It was sage advice.

The three of us lined up in front of the 3:20 group.  We knew that because of the conditions we would need to run the first half - which is also the hilliest - conservatively to save up energy and run a negative split on the second half.  We stayed just in front of the 3:20 group until mile 12 or so and started pulling away a bit.  At 13 I still had not made up my mind but I was feeling strong.  At mile 14  I picked up the pace and the others started to fade a bit.  I ran the rest of the way alone. I pretty much gave up on hitting the lap button on my watch at each mile.  I just my ran what I felt was the right pace.  I looked down occasionally but was not obsessive about it.  I knew I was well ahead of the 3:20 group so I was confident that I would BQ running my pace.

From mile 14 on I was in a zone.  I really can't explain it.  Everything just flowed.  In my past marathons at mile 18 I would say something like "oh no, 8 more to go" and today I was thinking - "8 to go, bring it on!"  Instead of thinking "gosh, still 30 something minutes to go"  I was thinking, "only 4 miles to go!" 

I was passing a lot of runners which was a huge rush.  I think the weather bothered many.  People were dropping like flies.  I never let the weather even enter my mind.  I never felt hot and thought the wind felt great because it cooled me down a bit.  The clouds kept the sun away and that was huge.  I am not sure what would be better - 55 degrees, low humidity, but the sun beating down on you for 3 hours or a bit warmer and humid but no sun.  I am sure it slowed me down a bit but I didn't think about it.

Anyway, the miles just melted away. There were runners from our group all along the route.  With 10k to go 2 of them saw me and ran with me for a while - shouting and encouraging me on.  At mile 23 another runner was there with her dog.  She ran next to me for a short while shouting and cheering me.  At mile 24 our group's coach was out there on his bicycle.  He rode next to me shouting at me for about a 1/2 mile and at 25 a large support group from our club was out shouting and cheering.  The whole run was a surreal and awesome experience.  Yes, I could have gone up to Ft. Worth and probably ran 4-5 minutes faster, but there is no way the experience would have even come close to running my home town marathon with all of the support here, and BQ'ing as well!

Oh, I was about 5 feet from the finish when my legs started to buckle. Come on!  5 feet away!  I always push that last 200m too hard.  I had to walk over the finish line.  As I did I walked to the side to put my hand on the fence.  So my left leg with my timing chip went to the side of the timing mat.  I did not even think about it.  A volunteer wrote my bid number down and my time because he thought it did not register.  He was right.  Now I get the fun of sorting all of that out!  Note to self - make sure your timing chip crosses the mat!

Notes to myself - what I learned:  If you have a big base 12-15 weeks is all you need to train for a marathon. Speed work once a week made a huge difference for me. Strength training at least once a week worked wonders for me, too - it kept me injury free, I believe, and helped me in my speed work sessions.  Nutrition is critical - even during daily training.  I always felt like I had lots of energy for my workouts and recovered quickly.  Doing MGP on long runs helped quite a bit as well.

First day back since the marathon.  I happened to pick up a copy of little magazine called Marathon and Beyond at Barnes and Noble.  Serendipitously it had a well researched and written article about marathon recovery.  Specifically about biopsies that have been performed on marathoners immediately after completing a marathon.  What they found is some serious stuff going on.  The full article can be read here: http://www.marathonandbeyond.com/

In light of the article, I took 5 solid days off.  I finally got the itch to go running again today - 5.5 easy around the soft trail near the office.  8:20 overall pace.  It felt good, a little stiffness but no major soreness.

Met up with a running buddy and we did 7.5 recovery/easy miles on the soft town lake trail.  Wonderful morning for a run. First few miles very slow - 9:30 and gradual increase to 8:30's or so for the last couple.

I planned on doing some cross training today but when I arrived at the gym the spinning class was full.  I hemmed and hawed and decided to go out for a run. 

I went out on a "Zen" run - no watch, no mileage, no pace, no time.  I took a completely new course so I had no idea how far I had run.  It was a perfect morning; overcast, misty, and a slight breeze.  I was a great run.  I came back to the gym in just over an hour, so I will put 7 miles down as a good estimate by effort.  I think I will do more of these.  It is liberating to be unencumbered from technology for once.

Cross training today - tough spinning class - 55 minutes some points power peaked over 400 watts.  It was good.