A.M. Ran with Chad. There was some snow on the ground, quite a bit of it, enough to affect the pace. I wanted to run something fast without overdoing it. Decided on pacing Chad through 5 miles at 6:00 pace. We started from the Fast Running Blog 5 miler start. I mispaced the first mile overcorrecting for the snow and the "spontaneous vaccination" state of my health and we got 5:50. I suspected it would perhaps be too much for Chad, as that course is a bit slower than ideal even when you have no snow, and we hit it 10 seconds faster than the target pace on top of it. So it was probably worth a good 5:40 without the snow, and 5:35 on a nice flat road. Nevertheless, Chad lived through another two quarters in 90 each. On the positive side of things, those felt like a jog, and I was happy that my health was still good enough for those to feel that way in spite of the snow. Then we hit an area where I have struggled recently in many of my tempo runs losing about 5 seconds per mile for apparently no reason related to fitness, fatigue, or lack of effort. I think it is because overtime the asphalt got broken up and it is now quite bumpy. Constant tiny bumps take out of you more than you would think. Let us assume for simplicity you land on a surface that is sloped at a 3% incline either up or down on every step. This makes every step like going either up or down on a 3% incline. If you were to go half way at 3% uphill and the other half at 3% downhill according to the Murphy's law of running (adversity when reversed returns only half of what it took), this is equivalent to running uphill all the way on 1.5% incline. On top of that, in the bumpy run scenario you do not get the benefit of a steady rhythm. In any case, it all added up to Chad slowing down to a 92 followed by 500 meters in 1:57, which is around 93. After seeing a 92 I told Chad we should go only 2.5 but challenged him to not let the 6:00 guy pass him. He took the challenge, made it to 2.25 still 1 second ahead, and then kicked in 86 finishing in 14:55. I figured 2.5 of tempo was good enough for me as well. We jogged some more, then ran with the kids - 0.5 with Jenny, Julia, and Jacob, 1 with Joseph and 3 with Benjamin. Benjamin's health was good enough to volunteer 23:17 for 3 miles. P.M. It was just like in the Russian song about a sentimental boxer who thinks it is rude to hit his opponent. There is a line that says "he is doing the upper cut, he squeezed me in the corner, I barely escaped, now comes the upper cut, I am on the floor, and I am not feeling good". I spent the evening in bed with 102.6 F fever. It was not responding to ibuprofen. Finally we figured out a way to contain it - it did respond to tylenol quite well. On the positive side of things, in the song the boxer wins the match without hitting his opponent once by wearing him out to the point that he collapses.
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