Cursed Realm of the Faceless Ghost

Well, it looks like I've fallen out of the blogging routine now that my race is done. I'll try to make sure that's only a one-week occurrence. 

This week I've mostly limited myself to a series of short, easy road runs. The only exception was today, when I ran out the door and up to Rock Canyon, and then a few miles up the trail. My turnaround was some arbitrary point a bit past the Squaw Peak trailhead.

This evening, I went for a bike ride down to the lake with Catherine and Elliott (who I pulled in the trailer). I guess that counts for something.  

For the most part, I'm starting to feel better. My legs were pretty sore at the start of the week, but they got progressively better as the days went by. And even when I felt bad, I was running fairly quickly--almost all of my miles were sub-7:00 this week. 

Today's run was a different story. I'm not sure if it was the heat or just a bad day, but I felt terrible on my (relatively mellow) climb up the canyon. I think the most obvious explanation is that I've lost my climbing legs while training for a road marathon. Now it's time to reverse that, since I think I'll run Sapper Joe in August.  

One of our cars has been in the shop for a while (I won't mention why), so this morning I decided to ride the Frontunner to work. I got up early and rode my bike to the station, but I didn't count on a real train getting in between me and the loading deck, so I missed my train and ended up having to ride right back home. I guess that counts as exercise, at least. 

In the evening I went out for a three mile run just so I could say I had done something.  

Today was like yesterday, but  at least made it to the bus in the morning. So when I went out for my evening run, I ran back down to the Frontrunner station so I could pick up my bike and ride it back home. 

That's right, another symbolic run. But I think I had a good excuse today. Catherine and I were at the hospital all day so she could have an operation on her heart (everything went wonderfully), and in the evening we were busy with Elliott's birthday (believe it or not, she's already two). Not much time for running left in there. 

I was going to run more tonight. But as I was lacing up my shoes, Elliott woke up screaming for me. So I got her out of the crib and comforted her for a while, which turned into some daddy-daughter Sesame Street time. By the time I got her back to bed it was so late that I decided to just go for another short, short run. I'll try to be better next week. 

I've been on a late night schedule all week, and I decided that the only way to stop that was to go to bed early enough to wake up early the next day. So no run tonight. 

I was going to run up the Canyon like I did last week, but by the time I got into Rock Canyon I could tell that I was feeling terrible. So instead of continuing up, I turned south and ran along the BST to Slate Canyon, then back home by way of the neighborhoods. I'm not sure why I've been feeling so terrible every time I try to run lately. 

Today started off with a huge screwup. I was supposed to pace the Big Cottonwood half marathon this morning, but I didn't set my alarm properly and I overslept. That means that not only did I leave the other pacer hanging, I also took a spot that someone else would have been very happy to take. I feel terrible, and that pretty much set the tone for my morning. 

The worst part is that I was afraid of something like this happening, so I tried to take extra precautions. Since I left my phone on the Frontrunner last week, I had to activate a new phone on Thursday. But the alarm didn't go off on Friday, and I would have overslept if my old flip phone, which I had left downstairs, hadn't gone off instead and managed to reach me all the way up in our room.

With that in mind, last night I decided that I would just use my old phone, which I knew would wake me up, as it had for years and years before I replaced it. What I forgot is that it was set to go off only on Monday through Friday. And the rest is history. 

So I think that pretty much ends my pacing career before it started. If any of the pacing crew is reading this, I am very, very sorry.