Getting back to Boston

Having to get back into sweating mode quick. It seems to have jumped from winter to darn near summer -- 75 degrees plus today, no clouds and not much wind. Made a conscious effort to keep it slow. Legs tight eaerly, loosened later. Ended up tacking about 1.7 miles onto the original plan, but still kept it slow. Just a tiny smidge over an hour for 6.4. AHR was 140, which I attribute to the temperature, and more uphills than usual for a recovery run. Got through it OK, though. Now I need to stretch some tonight; there's no reason the legs are as tight as they've been this weekend, because I'm not asking that much out of them.

Specific endurance intervals again. This time 4 X 1 mile with about 400 meters jog in between (I stretched that out just a tad). Wasn't sure I could do this tonight, had just felt blah all day after a enourmously stressful weekend, and legs weren't too lively anyway. But decided to HTFU and see if I could get 'er done.

First interval was not too spry, 7:30 pace. Didn't stretch beforehand though. After the first one, stretched during the recovery jog, which ended up at 0.27. Second interval was 7:01, which was really faster than I wanted. Jogged 0.28, including a pitstop. Third interval 7:04, jogged 0.30, then last interval was 7:11, which is really about the pace I wanted. Then jogged home about 2.5. Other than the usual bad pacing, mission accomplished. Got the legs to do what I wanted when they didn't want to do it.

Did the run tonight I should have done Saturday -- 12 miles with progression at the end. Didn't have the energy then to do it. Wasn't sure I had it tonight, but felt pretty good as the run progressed. I had thought I might only do 8 tonight thanks to stiffness after last night's interals, but that loosened up, the weather was not bad (upper 60s, not humid, bit of a breeze) and I decided to do 12. Then I tried to hammer the last three miles, and did. Marathon pace for the last mile and change to boot. Overall, very satisfying run. AHR of 134, not bad for 12 miles with progression.

My marathoning nightmare is that my legs feel like they did tonight when I line up for a peak 26.2. Heavy, tight, dead, you name it. Really never loosened up until the last mile. managed to squeeze out 8 at 10:00 pace anyway, but it was not easy. AHR was 125, so not a cardiovascular strain, but the legs were not cooperating.

The day I've been dreading for months finally arrived. It was zero fun, but I got through it better than I could have hoped.

My wife left me today. Not for anyone else, just left me because she doesn't want to be married any more. It was not a surprise at all; I've been expecting this since December. The only good thing is that that gave me time to prepare myself emotionally. If she had actually left in December, I'm not sure what I would have done. This way, I've trained for it, just as I train for a marathon. I'm not marathon-ready, psychologically, but I'm probably 10K ready. And that's allowing me to survive.

My strategy at this point is to fight the temptation to crawl back in my cave. Running is going to be a major portion of that. So, at 6:00 tonight, an hour after talking to my therapist, I was at the Fleet Feet store for the Thursday night fun run.  And darn if one of the four (yes, four) other runners was the guy who beat me two weeks ago in the Iron Pig. Nice guy, too. He invited me for speed work on Tuesdays and hills on Fridays. Might take him up on it later in the summer. The run wasn't bad; still upper 70s but a bit of a breeze. Should have done the headband and didn't, so I paid for that. It was 4.8, one major downhill/uphill, otherwise flat. Another one of the runners tonight ran Boston in '09, qualified for this year but didn't get entered in time, and will be up there with me in '11.

Pupe wants me to avoid making any major decisions. That's fine. Not interested in major decisions at this point. They're too much effort. Just interested in survival. Talked to T tonight. He's pretty upset too, trying to distract himself so he doesn't think about his parents separating. That makes two of us that are pretty upset. Maybe three, but I'm not ready to go quite that far on the speculation.

Really felt lousy Friday, physically and emotionally, so wasn't a hard decision to bag the run and spend time with my son instead. Got back out t his afternoon. it was cool and drizzly, really pretty good running weather, but the bear intervened. Twice. After the second one, decided to cut my losses and get home. Wound up doing 10 and change instead of the planned 12-14, so still got most of it done. Week was 51-plus.