Month: October 2008

So, the 20 miler on Saturday sucked.

Lesson 1: Make a plan. Stick to the f’n plan. On Friday, I’d checked the forecast. Saturday was supposed to be crappy and rainy. Sunday was supposed to be sunny and dry. No brainer – run on Sunday. Figured I’d repeat the great 18 miler experience and crank it out before Sunday school. However, just after lunch, I conned Missy into letting me take the afternoon and squeeze in the run.

Lesson 2: Fuel pre-run. What you’ve got in your belly is what you’re taking with you on the run. In my case, lunch was beans and rice, and nachos and salsa. Cheese doesn’t digest very quickly. So, the whole run was a bunch of fiber trying to work its way through my system, while at the same time, burbling back up in a series of “burps”, not being able to come up with a better word for small amounts of barf in the back of my mouth.

Lesson 3: Don’t fight the body’s cycles. (TMI after the jump)

Lesson 4: When your instinct says bail, bail. After the genesis of lesson 3, I decided to keep going. Made it out to the point in the Borough, read the memorial to the brave, brave men who fought off the Royal Navy in the War of 1812, and turned around. The combination of intestinal distress and enthusiasm had gotten me to start off too fast, and to alter my stride. I shoulda called Missy and had her come pick me up about mile 12, but I pressed on.

Lesson 5: Walking is slow, slow. Still feeling crampy (not the dehydrated crampy, but the intestinal crampy), I walked most of the last 6 miles to the house.

Lesson 6: Beer makes everything better. Missy fed me pizza and beer, and I feel great today.

Man, if the Marathon is half as bad as this last super-long run was, there’s no way I’m doing it again. But, I didn’t have anything going my way, so it’s hardly surprising that things went so bad.

Due to the lack of effort, I think I’ll extend my last double-digit run next weekend from the planned 12 to somewhere north of 16.

But this begs another question entirely: I’m headed to Sydney on short notice to give a talk next weekend (2 weeks before race day). I’m flying the last Saturday, and landing on Monday. What I’m planning to do is to do:

• Skip the long run on Saturday (maybe a quick 4 or 5 with the older boy)
• 2.5 hours Monday so as to sleep off jet lag (Essentially combine Saturday’s long run with Monday’s plan)
• x-Train on Tuesday (per plan)
• 1 hour Wednesday (per plan)
• x-train Thursday(per plan)
• 1 hour Friday before heading to the airport (per plan)
• 8-10 miles Saturday (per plan, and about 36 hours after Friday’s run due to time changes)
• rest of the Taper per plan

If anyone’s been to Australia and can recommend some routes in Sydney, I’d be much obliged.

Continue reading worst. run. ever. (And travel/training question)

So the question is, will I run or won’t I?

Saturday was the Physical readiness test (PRT) – I rocked it (relatively). 10:23 for the 1.5 mile run, which is about 40 seconds faster than in the spring. More situps and pushups, too.

Afterwards, though, I out to do the 6 miles I had left on the training schedule (mile from the gym to the track, 1.5 miles on the track, and 6). THe first 3 were good, but the last three were the most painful I’ve done in a long while. But, I gutted them out.

Sunday morning, it became clear why I’d been hurting so much – the mucus in my nose and the itch in my throat were clearly a gift from my two little disease vectors, and the disease pools that are their schools. Bundles of joy, my a$$ – they’re little ponds of microorganisms.

It hasn’t developed past a cold, so I think I’m good to go to run today, but I’ll probably knock 15 or 20 minutes off of the 60 minutes I’m supposed to do today.

Bleh

So, once in a while, there’s just something completely out of the blue that’s nice about being a runner. For Missy and me today, that was not having to worry about transportation when we had to drop the car off at the shop for a periodic tune-up.

Here’s how it went down:

– Fridays are commuter van days. So, I took Melissa’s car (the one that’s up to date on maintenance) to the commuter lot.

– Melissa got Jake off to school, dropped Nate off at preschool, and took my car to the VW shop.

– From the VW shop, Missy did the 4 mile run (Uphill) to the commuter lot to grab her car.

– After the boys were done with school, and my car was all sorts of good again, Missy went and picked it up at the VW shop, leaving her car in the employee lot there.

– After a full day’s work, I left my stuff in the commuter van and ran the 4 miles (downhill) to the dealership’s employee lot (the shop was closed when the van gets back to the lot).

– Picked up Melissa’s car, drove back to the commuter lot, got my satchel out of the vanpool, and headed home to my astounding children and lovely wife, who made a bit of taco salad tonite.

– Played with my new helicopter for a while

– Headed down to the Dutch Tavern in New London for a beer or two, while struggling to remember which plays Eugene O’Neil had written (Long Day’s Journey into Night and Mourning Becomes Electra for the record. I’ve acted in neither).

Anyways, none of this would have been easy without running. We would have had to inconvinience someone. Instead, we both got in the day’s workout, saved some gas, and got even more smug satisfaction than we could from driving Priusii.

Linger on, folks.