A Lean and Hungry Look

After a pretty lousy week in terms of getting out, I decided I needed some miles in my legs if for no other reason than to give myself the confidence that I could handle running Boston with Brooke without looking like a fool.

Drove out to Hillcrest High around 5:15 and ran north through my old digs in Murray, through Murray Park (restroom was open--great news!), up Atwood, over to 500 East, then up to Liberty Park and back.  Very easy pace--around 8:12 avg on the way out, 7:30 avg on the way back.  Knees felt a little sore for the final few miles, but that's probably due to the lack of miles in the legs.

Very little achilles soreness following the run and throughout the day, so I think Boston is officially a go.  I should also be ready to start training for SG once Boston is over.

Easy effort with Maja down to 15th East, through Sugarhouse Park, then up Parley's Canyon Drive to 20th East and back home.  Felt like I had some cobwebs from Saturday's long run, but nothing too bad.

I've been working harder to eat better, limiting my intake of refined and processed foods, avoiding sweets, and snacking less.  Although it's a daily battle with the Peanut M&Ms at the office, I'm staying on the wagon pretty well at the moment.  I need to start weighing myself to see if the changed eating habits are producing any results.

Nothing fancy this morning.  Just an easy 5 with Maja down to 15th, out to around 21st, and back home through the neighborhood.  I need to fill my Albuterol prescription, though, as the pollen is starting to shrink my airway a bit.

Note weight.  I don't know how accurate it is (I weighed myself post-run and post-breakfast), but I'll try to remember to weigh myself before I run in the mornings from now on.

Easy pace out to Millstream Lane and back (via Parley's).  I guess I did have about a half-mile burst in there around mile 8, where I saw a guy up ahead and decided to run him down and pass him, but otherwise the pace was relaxed.

Boston Marathon.  I ran with Brooke, so I'm not counting it as a race.  Amazing weather, amazing crowds, amazing times up front!  Brooke was on track for around 3:36 at the half (more likely 3:40, given the difficulty of the second half of the course), but her stomach started giving her trouble, then her legs started giving out on the Newton hills.  She gutted it out, though, and was able to pick it up a bit over the final two miles.  All in all, it was an incredible experience just being able to take it all in without worrying about my own race plan or fitness.  I took a lot of photos on my iPhone, recorded the craziness at Wellesley and BC, and even got a photo of Dick and Rick Hoyt as we passed them around mile 8.  Embarrassingly, I had to lay down just past the finish line for about 20 minutes because I kept blacking out trying to walk through the finishing corral (which feels about a mile long) to get my medal and food packet.  Brooke finally had to get the food for me, which included some chips.  As soon as I got some salt in my system, I was fine.  I know my fitness was entirely inadequate for running a marathon, but I think the problem may have been that I'm just not used to being out on my feet for 4 hours (we finished in 4:00:21)!  It gave me a new appreciation for those in the middle and back of the pack in marathons.  It also motivated me to start training for St. George, so that I don't have a 4-hour marathon as my most recent race for too long!

We left Boston yesterday and drove up to Maine for a couple of days, so I ran on the hard-packed sand this morning on a gorgeous beach in Ogunquit.  The wind was blowing like crazy, but it felt great to stretch the legs out a little and to start working out a little bit of soreness from the marathon.  Since the pace of the marathon was so much slower than I'm used to running, it used different muscles.  Instead of my quads and hams being shot, it's my hip flexors that are sore.  I assume that's because I was taking shorter strides and probably spent more effort in an upward direction than a forward one.

We came back to Boston yesterday for one more night before leaving this afternoon.  Brooke and I went for an easy jog around the Boston Public Garden and the Boston Common, then dropped by a secondhand book store and bought a guide for a walking tour of Beacon Hill, Boston's literary district.  We only ran a couple of miles, but we walked at least another 4 doing the Literary Trail, then traveling to Cambridge and walking all over Harvard's campus.  This is an amazing place.  I may have to come back and try to race the course, since I've now run it twice without actually training for the race.

I registered for the SG lottery yesterday, so I figured I should start getting out the door as close to 5-6 days per week as possible until my official training plan starts up in a few weeks.  I had heard some rain during the night, so I wore my rain gear but couldn't find gloves quickly enough.  Maja usually refuses to run if it's raining, but although the ground was wet when we left, it wasn't raining at all, so she joined me enthusiastically.  Her enthusiasm waned, however, when our pleasant morning turned into a driving hail storm, which turned into a pretty decent snow storm.  She kept looking up at me as if to ask, "What the $%@# are we doing our here?"  My hands were a little frozen by the time we made it home, but by then the storm had mostly died down.  What a lovely April it's been.

No hail or snow this morning, so that was a bonus.  Temperature was chilly, but the sun was bright and the sky was clear.  Pace was easy, but it must have been a little faster than usual, because Maja was dragging a bit after 2 miles.  The focus now is just getting back to running every day.

Maja was dragging this morning, so I shortened my originally planned loop and dropped her off, then did a quick loop down to Guardsman and around 500 South to Foothill.  It felt good to open it up for a mile or so, but it was also clear that my fitness stinks.

Woke up to a fresh couple of inches on the grass.  Unbelievable.  I had to sneak in a quick 8 before heading up to Centerville for Jacob's soccer game.  It was chilly but gorgeous, and Maja was back to her normal self.  I headed across the U campus, then ran down 2nd Ave to Virginia Street, up to Popperton (about died running up the hill--I am seriously out of shape), then turned around and looped up to the U of U Hospital and through Fort Douglas and Research Park and home.