Step by step, mile by mile

AM: 4 on Sandy. legs felt a bit lethargic from the time off but nothing hurt. happy to get out there.

PM: 4 in the evening. Felt even better than this morning; still need a few more runs to loosen up everything and be in full form but doing both runs today and legs not hurting is all I could ask for. I guess the 6-minute pace was just the running gods being generous :)

SOTD: Lift Yourself - Kanye West

AM: 4 in the morning. had fun doing it

PM: 8 in the evening. First 6 decided to get a bit outside of my pocket by running the first mile a tad faster and then just trying to hold that effort and see how the pace dropped. Splits were 6:59, 6:40, 6:33, 6:24, 6:12, 5:45(okay, I increased the effort for this one a little), 6:25 avg. As soon as I finished I realized I was overheating, hard. High was 99 today so it was still pretty warm when I ran, excited to see what the pace is like in a month or two when I'm in better shape and it's cooler out. Got a little down on myself because that last 400m of the 5:45 I almost fell a couple times because the legs were turning to lead, but I put in perspective with the heat and especially the break I'm coming off of. Jogged 2 more without my watch after. Had fun out there.

SOTD: Don't Fear(The Reaper) - Blue Oyster Cult. A top 10 song of all time in my opinion, I don't have a definitive list but I know Billie Jean, Stairway, and this song would all be on it. Probably American Pie too. if I had a hip-hop song it'd probably be either Jesus Walks(Kanye) or N.Y. State of Mind(Nas)

AM: 5 easy. Only got about 3 hours of sleep last night so legs were a little tight still from last night. Just ran a bit easier and thought about training, still way faster than 99% of the paces I've ran at this year. Was planning on doing 7, but during it I thought about my weekly mileage I planned to do and realized it was probably too high, I'll need to sacrifice the mileage to add things like weights and workouts into the equation, so 5 is all I'll be doing most mornings. Don't worry, the mileage will still be high enough to make sure Conner, Mike, Yasir, or Jason never get that #1 mileage spot again once I hit the full miles next week ;)

no run in the PM; woke up from my nap and it was raining torrentially which continued about an hour so I knew Hilton park would be a huge puddle. Hopefully not the case tomorrow morning. I def can suck it up and run anyway, but it's not a hard week. Gonna do something faster tomorrow morning, maybe some uphill 400's.

Also getting woken up by the sound of rain, just rain, kinda serene. Felt zen-like. SOTD is ummmm A Life in the Day of Benjamin Andre - Outkast

AM: a bit over 2 in the morning, rounding down. Slept through the alarm so it's all I had time for, I threw in some lighthearted fartlek running after the first mile, just around 100m or so of 5:40 pace every 400m or so. After I started that the easy running went down from 7:10 to 6:40 pace. Hopefully I'll get in a better run tonight and one tomorrow morning before the storm is supposed to hit. Since with school and work I'm very limited on time, I'm having trouble figuring out where to put the long run in, the only two options are the day before a workout, or Sunday, either before my 12 hour shift or after. If I were just doing 15-18 miles I'd be fine the day before a workout but I wanna try to get it up to 27, even if it takes a few weeks to get there, so I'm gonna try before, which means sleeping 3 hours, waking up, running 3 hours, and trying to get another hour of sleep before work if possible. Luckily I don't work this weekend so I can try it out without the actual shift after. Might not be wise to run 140 miles next week because this week's been lackluster so far mileage-wise, might just try for about 100 with workouts and add the other 40 the next week. Or maybe the ability to run so much is in my heart and not my legs. We'll see.

PM: a tad under 7 in the evening, adding up with the morning run to a tad over 9, rounding down again. Felt good, 6:50's and 7:00's felt easy. Legs were still a little achey from the time off, but nothing specific or painful. Excited for real training; can't wait to bring my manic approach for running lately to workouts.

SOTD: Combat - Danny Brown. His new album dropped today and I had the weird horn sample on the track stuck in my head the entire PM run

3 in the morning. All for today since I'll be doing a longer run early tomorrow, not a long run though since I don't wanna jump into training too fast; I'd be alright with 15 miles if nothing feels wonky. Last run before real training! Let's go!

SOTD: Let It Be - The Beatles

So, I had rice and beans for dinner, and I learned if I'm gonna change my sleep schedule for the umpteenth time with sleeping 8-midnight, waking up for an hour or so and then doing a workout/run while the rest of the world sleeps, then coming back home to eat, shower and get a couple more hours of sleep, I can't eat rice and beans for dinner. Spent 8-10 lying in bed unable to fall asleep, so I made some coffee to make sure I'd be alert for the run. That and the rice and beans made for a bad combo, and 3 miles into the run I could tell I was a few minutes of running away from dooming myself to a couple of painful hours on the pot. Real shame, it rained earlier so it felt so good out. In better news, my legs felt amazing, felt like I could have gotten to 15 miles before I knew it if the GI issues weren't there. Plus this gives me a chance to very slightly sleep deprave myself by only getting 4 or so hours tonight so I can fall asleep at 8PM tonight no problem. In other good news, I spent about 8 hours studying for the MCAT today. I'll be back tomorrow at midnight, and I'll be better prepared.

12AM: drove to intramurals and ran 6 there, wanted more but played it safe with the legs not being at full mileage capability from all the 3 mile days.

2PM: 7 miles. Felt good, autumn finally hit today so it was mid-70's out, plus it rained earlier in the day so not a lot of humidity. Was worried I'd lose my summer base w the past few weeks but hoped that I just needed a few 45-60 minute runs to loosen up and I'd get most of it back, feels like that's the case.

SOTD: Shook Ones pt 2 - Mobb Deep

12AM: 7 total. My hype for training hard has been so high I've felt like I've been bursting at the seams lately so I was gonna do a tempo, then around mile 4 of the warmup I realized I should probably save workouts until at least next week, so I just ran what I would have done for a warmup and cooldown. Warmup was 5 miles with two 200m strides in 35.0 and 31.2. Both felt great and could have held the pace a while longer. Also this run gave me an idea of what it'll be like to run workouts at midnight... I think it'll be really fun. I really do run my best at night so even if most races will be in the light of day, working out at night means I'll be running my best times.

2PM: 7 easy with strides at the end. Felt pretty good; in the last phase of training whenever I'd feel like this I was sure it'd go away as soon as I hit full mileage again, now that mileage will be a bit lower I'm 50/50 on the feeling staying, based on how I've responded to aerobic workouts in the rare instances I'd do them in the past I'm hopeful though.

SOTD: PTSD - JPEGMAFIA. If anyone reading this knows about peggy then I have mad respect for you and your appreciation for underground experimental hip hop

12AM - 8. 

2PM - 7 with strides. got a bit excited on those, first 3 were about 4:20 pace and the last one dipped under 4 minute pace a little so my quads were a bit sore after. Gotta chill out on those.

SOTD - I'd Love to Change the World - Ten Years After

2AM - 7 with 2 400m on the road. one uphill in 75, and another going back down the hill in 58. i’m okay with those times staying stagnant as i add on more hill repeats but i was surprised how quickly they took me out. not in that my legs hurt, more that just my legs felt exhausted after just 2 400s. however now that i’m typing this around 11AM my right knee does ache a little, i think the cause is not running on asphalt at all. gonna stretch it out, was gonna do a couple of 1200’s tomorrow morning but now i’ll probably just take it easy. i didn’t stretch much after the warmup either so maybe that played an effect.

1PM - 7 miles, kenyan jog style. did some flexibility stuff for the knee right after my last post and my knee felt fine after; i think it was just tight from sleeping. run felt good, quads still a little tight but definitely loosened up during the run. might do the 1200s after all, i’ll play it by ear. if i do i doubt it’ll be anything faster than 80 seconds a lap.

SOTD: Can It Be All So Simple - Wu Tang. they really are for the children!

12PM - 1 mile. Slept in and had work at 3 and needed to study so I thought it was all I had time for, but I just got a call saying I don't need to come in today so I'll probably get in a medium long run later today. Changed my mind, I'm just gonna take the rest of today off to study and get one last bit of rest before I get my 7 in before work tomorrow, then kick off the first week of real training with a long run Sunday morning. It's gonna be fun doing workouts again, excited for the tempos, hill repeats, intervals, etc.

1 mile before work, 3 after. Cut it short to save energy to wake up early tomorrow... two 13 hour shifts in two days is hard enough!

So, working a full-time job, going to school for engineering, and running the crazy mileage I was running a month ago is hard to balance, and if something tips the scale, it comes crashing down. So over the past month I've kind of felt myself spiraling and getting into a rut, something I'm getting out of right now. I'm on the upswing, I'm sure of it, so this isn't a pity party post, I'll be okay. However, I've decided to take a break from the blog until after my finals are over. I could blog, it's not a time constrant thing; my reason may sound dumb, but I want these next 7 weeks or so of training to be me and me alone. me against the clock timing those intervals and the world itself. No support from y'all, no "good job". I believe that term plants a seed of complacence in the mind, that instead of striving to work harder, you think that maybe where you are is good enough because other people think so. And no one is harder on me than me, also I think asking fellow bloggers to bully me in my training just wouldn't work the same :) I'll record all my runs on paper and put them in the blog when I come back after finals finish the first week of December. I hope to use this time to make a big jump in fitness, I really do. I hope all of you do too. I'll see y'all then :)

Also my opinion on a couple things before my blogging hiatus:

When I return my training is gonna make Conner's look like Connor's ;) (don't get it twisted y'all both inspire me)

1:59:40 is cool. An incredible feat. However, I feel like this demeans the ratified world record in some sense until it exceeds that, and if anyone but Kipchoge held that record right now, they'll use the argument "yeah, but it's no 1:59:40" until it's under 2 hours. Maybe I'm wrong. It still inspires me to train harder.

Also, I suppose my runs will upload to Strava unintentionally, so some bloggers might get some insight to what I'm doing, I doubt I'll update with actual words though.

Also also, I know I wasted some fitness I built with my summer mileage this past month. But I don't want that to be the highlight of my training, some crazy high weekly mileage(even if I am proud). I want it to be an indicator of what's to come. Something that I can look back at in a year and say "when I ran those 165 mile weeks, that's when I knew I had the talent and capability to do what I've done this past year". And I'll do everything I can to make it so!

Lastly, huge s/o to Kenny for 3:03:30 at Chicago! From the day we first met, I understood he had that same passion for running I had, and he became my first "rival"(it never got in the way of our friendship, even if Kenny has baseless slander in his bio saying I was mad he made Varsity a year before I did. I was proud!) and I hated seeing how his diagnosing of diabetes my senior year kept him back from being one of our top guys in the best year we had as a team in XC. I shouldn't have been fighting for our 3rd varsity spot, it should have been our 4th! But I'm proud he's learned to run with it and if you all don't read his training you're missing out. He's gonna kill it at Boston 2020.

4k tempo in 14:16

“bet you won’t write about what made you take that 5 day break” - my running log. i won’t.

threw in a 400m pickup in 68

conversation between me and the rec-league rugby coach’s ~5 yr old son who stopped me on my run:

kid: wanna see me unlock them?

me: what’s that?

kid: *holds up two broken chain-link fence hooks hooked together*

me: sure.

kid: *pulls them apart*

me: *feigning surprise* ain’t that something.

kid: why are you running?

me(about to say to get hot): to get... fast.

kid: why?

me: so i can be faster than the people i race.

kid: *points to bird* is that an owl?

me: i think it’s a bird.

kid: aren’t owls birds?

me: good point. catch you later, little dude.

kid: alright. see ya.