Getting back to Boston

Started off March with a really bad backache from the moment I woke up. Hurt to bend over, get up, sit down, stand, you name it. Hot bath, stretching, ibuprofen didn't touch it. Finally about noon, tried the one thing I hadn't tried yet: Running. Jog around the block (0.8 miles) hurt like the dickens, but it got the blood flowing, and soon my back felt much better. I was even able to go shopping with my wife.

So I'm winding up with a triple workout today, so to speak, which may screw up my per-run average for March. After the 0.8 midday jog, I just finished a 6.25-mile recovery run, and will go for another 4-mile run later while my wife works out at the athletic club to cap off an 11-mile recovery day. Addendum: Wife didn't go to the AC, but I did, and legs felt good enough to crank it up to GMP for the last half-mile. Even put the 1% incline on the dreadmill for the first time in a really long time.

When I actually got around to looking at my training schedule for this week, I found that yesterday was supposed to  have been a 7-mile single, not a 10-mile double (or 11-mile triple, which is what I actually ran). And tonight was supposed to be a 10-miler. So I flipped days, sorta, and ran 8 miles of GA on the dreadmill. Also was supposed to do strides tonight, but didn't; I'll put those on tomorrow night's run.

Usually when I'm at the AC, I'm there at off-peak hours and not too many people are there. Tonight, it was peak time and the TMs were full -- but there was no line, so no one bugged me about hogging a machine for 72 minutes instead of the 30-minute limit. The woman on the TM next to me was interesting. She was running intervals or fartlek or something, and when she cranked it up, her leg turnover was something else. She HAD to be doing 200 strides per minute minimum; those little legs were a blur. Looked like one of those stupid commercials for Comcast cable internet (if you've never been subjected, consider yourself fortunate). She said she was going to run a leg in the Little Rock Marathon relay in two weeks. I think if she can maintain that turnover for 10K, she'll do quite nicely.

 Speaking of the LRM, today is the one-year anniversary of my first marathon at Little Rock. Undertrained, dumb as a box of rocks, hard-headed, you name it, I'm lucky I survived, much less finished. Fortunately, I learned from my stupidity and at least a few of my mistakes and managed to correct them for Memphis. After struggling to finish in 4:46, I'm reasonably certain that if I went out on a training run this weekend at a moderate pace and just kept going after the planned distance, I could easily finish 26.2 in 4:20 or less now. 

Definitely this was a good time for a stepback week. "Only" 64 sounds so easy after 80 and 76 the last two weeks. A year ago, I would have gone apoplectic if you'd told me I'd run 64 miles in ANY week, much less do it week after week after week. I topped out at 30 mpw for Little Rock, remember. 

Rest in peace, Adam Nickel. 

Surprisingly good run tonight. After an especially greasy cheeseburger did its thing to my digestive tract, I decided to try to run as much as my GI would let me, whatever that was. The plan was for a 13-mile progression run on the dreadmill, working my way up to GMP + 10%, which right now is about 8:20 pace, capped off by strides. Had to take one two-minute break, but otherwise no problems. Legs felt great, and I noticed as fast as I was going, my breathing was remarkably slow. The last five miles before the strides were indeed at 8:20 pace. And the strides felt pretty smooth at sub-6:30 pace. I couldn't have asked for this run to go any better -- especially not after the hour or so preceding it.

Actually passed up the dreadmill tonight due to nice weather and rampant DM boredom for a moonlit run along the Arkansas River, despite the objections of DW. Main risk on this run was the cyclist who ran me off the trail despite my reflective vest and that spotlight he was wearing on his head (he could definitely use it for some illegal deer hunting). Speaking of which, I saw more deer and more rabbits on this run than I did people -- and this in the middle of a metro area of a half-million-plus.

Anyway, this was recovery night after last night's hard 13-miler, and I kinda cruised 8.01, from the I-30 Bridge to the wooden bridge at Burns Park and back. Legs took quite a while to loosen up, but did better in the last three miles. With temps in the low 50s, no clouds and not much wind, it was a very pleasant night to run without either freezing or overheating.

I posted last night on RWOL that I felt like a slacker after finishing my 8-mile recovery run, and I wasn't sure whether it was because I "only" ran 8 or because I ran them slowly.

Well, 8 more tonight, and I think I have my answer. Tonight's run doesn't really fit labels like progression or tempo or fartlek. I think I'd describe it as a push-it, as in push the pace -- hard. I pushed the pace early when my legs felt like lead, and I really pushed the pace late when I loosened up. Lots of variation in pace, but not fartlek-type. And I ran mile 4 and mile 8 at GMP, mile 8 was actually significantly faster than GMP. Total time: 67:59 -- a tick under 8:30 average. And no slacking.

Ever have one of those runs where you just knew you were going to bonk at some point, the only question was when? That was today for me. I knew I hadn't been eating and hydrating properly all week, and the legs just didn't feel right from the beginning this morning. Plus it was 70 degrees at 7 a.m. (have I mentioned lately how much I hate running in warm/hot weather?) and I forgot to pack my GU gel in my new Amphipod belt, which has solved the abrasion-of-my-back problem but not the predawn memory lapse problem. So I just decided to treat it like a regular run as long as the legs would hold out, complete with the progression to MP + 10%. I managed to do that, and got in about three miles at MP+10 before the bonk. From there, it was just a question of getting back to the car as best I could.

The Crackheads are in their final week before the Little Rock Marathon and were only running six today. Since I was planning to go 10 miles more than that, I decided to sleep in an hour, start my run at a different site and go on my own course. I did all that, and darn if I didn't run into a mob of Crackheads on the Main Street Bridge and beyond on the river trail. I guess they selected a different course than I had expected for the final six miler.

One new thing today: The first time I had done the complete River Trail loop, both sides of the river and across the Big Dam Bridge. Started from the River Market, looped down to the Clinton Center, back over MSB and down the north side of the trail to BDB, across to the LR side, down to downtown, back to the Clinton Center and loop back to the car for the full 16 miles.