Getting back to Boston

Back on the TM tonight as Minnesota visits Arkansas for a few days -- temps around 25 and wind chill in the teens. Started out planning a recovery run, but again it felt right to crank up the pace as the run went on. Ended up at 8:34 pace for the last two miles, which would be interim-GMP plus 10% until I decide finally what GMP is going to be. For now, I'm going to work toward a 7:45 pace. I know I could hold 7:45 for 13 miles two months ago, the trick will be to double that in five months. My shoot for the moon goal is probably a 3:15 (7:24 pace); my fallback goal is just a BQ. Wow -- BQ as a fallback goal.

Anyway, run went well. Had a weird twinge in the left glutes as the run began which I have not felt before, but it went away in the first 400 and did not return. Those last two miles at 8:34 felt quite comfortable. I did not turn on the fan in the fitness center because I wasn't sure I needed it, as cold as it was outside. Turned out I worked up quite a sweat without it. That's OK too; my race is in May, when it will definitely NOT be in the 20s, so I might as well maintain some degree of acclimation to "heat" so that I'm not caught unprepared when it warms up in the spring. 

New complication in the training routine. Boss wants me to work two Saturdays per month. He is convinced, probably correctly, that our nurse practitioner has no intention of returning from her maternity leave, now at three months and counting, and he does not want to have his weekday clinics loaded with followup visits. So we see followups on Saturday morning so he has more times to do the procedures that really pay the bills. He says he will pay me extra for the Saturdays, in addition to the raise I just got, but don't know what that will mean. And Saturday is, of course, my long run day. I suppose I can do my LR after the clinic, especially in the winter, or start my clinic after the LR (less likely, especially as the LR starts to creep back into the high teens, which it will), or do my LR on Sunday (I like that option least of all, but it may become necessary). Saturday clinic starts 1/3/09. Stay tuned.

Anyway, back to tonight's run. Easy 6 on the TM (it's still raining and barely above freezing, not that I was likely to run outside). Wore the HRM for the first time in a long time. Average HR was 139, creeping up to 151. Last HRR figures I had, 139 was about 70% of my HRR. But then I really have no idea what my resting heart rate is now; haven't tried to check it in months, because rolling over to, say, grab a watch or turn the light on puts the heart in high gear. Is it in the high 50s like it was a few months back? Dunno, but kinda doubt it.

Going to Camden tomorrow for Christmas. I'm supposed to do an 8 mile GA with strides tomorrow, but this may get in the way. Nana has a treadmill; I may do an easy 5 on the TM tomorrow night and do my strides when I get back Thursday night. Or do them Friday morning; that would work too.

New complication in the TM issue. Went to the mom-in-law's for Christmas Eve. Mom-in-law has a TM she never uses, so voila, there's my run rather than trot around after dark in a town I don't know all that well. TM works fine. The overhead fan and the HVAC vent in that room don't. So I got zero circulation for an hour on the TM. Felt like I was running in a sauna. Otherwise, the legs did fine on a routine recovery run.

I think I'll wait until I get home tomorrow night for another run, or maybe a crosstraining session and run Friday morning. No more TM runs at the in-laws...

Ordered my copy of Pfitz' new book, or the second edition rather, this morning. Also ordered Noakes at the same time, so I'll have all sorts of new info to peruse on cold winter nights.

No training today; spent today occupied with Christmas, and a good long nap after Christmas dinner that was much needed, then driving two hours home from the in-laws.

As is typical with our long drives, my wife and son both dozed off and I had a lot of time to think. One of the things I thought about is that run in Memphis, and its timing. If I were seven months older, it would have been a BQ run -- I would be 50 before the 2010 Boston Marathon, and my time was a BQ time for the 50-54 bracket. But because I was born in October and not in March, I'm not yet BQd.

Some people would probably send in their app  for 2010, fudge the birth date by seven months, and get in. The BAA doesn't know. And I still would have been 48 at the time I ran in Memphis. It's tempting, I have to admit. But I'm not gonna do it. I'll do my spring attempt, probably at Newport, and if that doesn't do it, I'll do a fall race, maybe Chicago or Memphis again or Mid-South. A 3:30 in either one gets me in for 2010. A 3:35 in the fall gets me in for 2011, when I will be 50. I can get those 163 seconds for Newport, or I can run another 3:33 in the fall, and get in the right way. And if I can't get in the right way, it's my own darn fault.

So now, having taken today off and with no work tomorrow, I can do a morning workout tomorrow, then take my son shopping for his college computer purchase, then go buy my wife's last Christmas present, then go open presents tomorrow night at my parents'. Then hit the road with the Crackheads on Saturday at Oucho's, in the West Little Rock Himalayas, and do a Friday-Saturday combo for the first time in a long time. When (not if) I am finally training for Boston, Oucho's will have a prominent role, because it's got killer uphills and killer downhills. 

This one fits in the category of boy-yo-mama-taught-you-better-than-that. Despite fighting this cold or bronchitis or whatever the heck upper respiratory garbage I've had for the past week or so, I got up this morning and headed to Oucho's. Warm, muggy, raining intermittently. But at least there was a breeze so I didn't get overheated. Headed out on the hike of the mountains of west Little Rock. Became obvious very quickly that my body has not recovered from this whatever. Lot of walking. Lot of thinking I should be walking when I wasn't. Somehow managed to finish 10.1 miles and get back to Oucho's in less than two hours. And managed to run most of the big hills -- Rahling, coming and going, and Pebble Beach. I wondered where the Sherpas and the oxygen masks were, but I ran the hills.

 Then I went home and took a really long nap. I feel a little better -- emphasis on little -- but I'm still definitely not over this junk. Better now than in the middle of training for Newport, I guess.