[12] Twelve days left? Twelve?

ORN:  This morning, I ran a 5x1000 interval workout.  It was tough, especially since I was still stiff from Sunday's 13, yet I ran it with remarkable consistency.  In fact, during the workout, I felt as if I were floundering... running terribly... struggling.  I considered just ending it and trying again at lunch.  But I stuck with it and was rewarded.  I was shocked to see my times afterward.  Check these out.

1. 4'58"
2. 4'57"
3. 4'57"
4. 4'58"
5. 5'00"

Like a machine, right?  [Of course, my target time was 4'46" but whatever.]  All told, I ran 6.85 miles in 1:05'02".  The only thing I could complain about is some stiffness and soreness in my hips, but even that went away after a while.  The morning itself was perfect: clear, cool, and 55°.  In fact, until I warmed up, I was afraid I was underdressed.  I was downright cold at first.  I thought, great, I'm going to catch pneumonia right before the big race.  Perfect.  But after my first effort, I was fine and the cold became the least of my worries.  After I finished, I quickly threw on a jacket and jumped into the car so I wouldn't catch a chill.

 

Twelve days to go until Chicago, and plans are starting to come together.  Wifey and I are probably going to the American Cancer Society team dinner while the buddies we're driving up there with are planning to go to some ritzy place that doesn't even have prices on the menu.  In my experience, that seldom means the food is free.

 

[14]

ORN:  This morning, I got up to go run, but then I went back to bed for a half hour.  I wanted another hour, but Fernando wanted to go out and eat breakfast.  So that was that for me and sleeping in today.  I had a long, late night, and I could have used the sleep.  But since I was up anyway, I geared up and hit the road.  I ran 13 miles in 2:15'48".  That was a good time but not a great one.  I could have run a little faster, but today just wasn't the day.  I totally believe I could do a sub-two-hour half marathon.

What's most exciting to me about today's run was the realization that this would be my last 13-mile workout.  I have no intention, at this time, of ever running another marathon.  Instead, I am going to strive to become the best half-marathoner I can be, and I don't need to run 13+ miles on a weekend to do that unless it's race day. 

Two weeks until Chicago!

[16] It can't rain all the time

ORN:  Today, I ran a bugger of a tempo run, five miles.  I planned to run it at about an 8'36" pace, but that didn't happen.  The main cause of today's suffering was the rain and humidity.  Running through fog and mist half the time, I think there was more water vapor in the air than molecular oxygen.  At times, it was hard to breathe.  Not "call 911" hard-to-breathe, but I could sense that my lungs were straining to work efficiently.  If I had gills, or the skin of a salamander, capable of sucking O₂ right out of the air, then I'm sure I would have been able to run closer to my goal pace.  As it was, I gave up on the goal after two miles or so and just tried to do my best, running comfortably hard on the same hilly course I always run. 

 

I suppose I could have been tired.  I ran a quick-and-dirty two miles last night because I blew off cross-training.  I had a bad eating day too.  My thinking around lunch time went something like this:  "Let's see, I weighed in at 171.5 this morning, less than when I got out of boot camp.  I haven't weighed this little in a long time.  Let me destroy that achievement with inactivity and a Chinese buffet."  I can be an idiot sometimes.  But you'd understand if you could try the dumplings at this place.

 

On Sunday, I'm running this, my favorite 13-mile course.  How funny is it?  I'm looking forward to only running 13 miles.  A mere 13 miles.

 

[18] Glee!

ORN:  Today, I ran a tough 8x800 workout.  It was one of those interval workouts where I say to myself, "I'm going into my sixth one. Does that mean I have three to go, or two?"  "Aren't I done yet?"  "Why am I doing this?"  The whole workout was 7.15 miles and took me 1:08'32".  My splits were OK; only one was on-target.  Most were consistent, which is good.  Obviously, I died at the end.

1. 3'54"
2. 3'47"
3. 3'54"
4. 3'54"
5. 3'55"
6. 3'55"
7. 4'08"  <-- b0nk
8. 4'01"

My struggle this morning was only slightly lessened by the glee I feel with the addition of the latest member of my entourage: Rudy, my new Garmin Forerunner 305.  Thanks to the untimely death of my unnamed Polar RS200, and a steep drop in Garmin prices over the last few months, I was finally able to join the cult of Garmin.  I squealed with geek-lust when I opened the box and saw the beautiful, untouched gadget inside, waiting to be filled with my precious, precious data.  [That sentence was a little more ribald than I intended.]

 

Rudy was the first name I came up with, and it works for me for several reasons.  First, Rudy derives from Rude Boy and the titles of countless ska songs: "Rudy's Got Soul," "A Message to You Rudy," "Rudy Can't Fail."  Second, Rudy was the mack daddy of the Cosby Kids, playing an actual electric guitar in their junkyard band.  Russell always said he had no class, but he was just a playa-hatin'.  Plus, I have never known anybody with the name of Rudy, and as Jimmy Stewart says in Harvey, "Maybe that's why I always had such hopes for it."

 

My first impression of Rudy is love at first sight, but I have to get used to his quirks.  Frankly, there's so much data to view while I am running, I am unsure what I want to see and when.  It was overwhelming.  That'll get ironed out as our relationship develops. 

 

But one thing I can already say that I love, without qualification, is it's pace-warning function.  With the Polar RS200, which was based on a shoe pod accelerometer, I was beeped at constantly, even when I felt like I was running smoothly and consistently.  "You're going too fast.  Now, you're going too slow.  Too slow!  TOO SL-...  Now you're going too fast!"  My solution to that problem was to shut the thing up by widening the range of the pace zone I wanted to stay in, but that was a poor solution since the whole point was to train myself to run at specific paces.  Widening the ranges just permitted more variance from my target pace.  Thus, with the RS200, I was never on-pace.  Rudy gives me much less harassment and much better coaching.  I locked into my pace zone, and so long as I ran evenly and on-pace, he left me alone.  He beeped at me, sure, but I knew why when it happened.  I felt myself slowing down, and then within seconds, Rudy would complain. 

 

Another thing I like is the history interface.  I like the way Rudy scrolls through laps -- much easier than with the RS200. 

 

Looking ahead on my schedule, I have a tempo run on Thursday.  I'm kinda looking forward to that since it's only five miles.  Ten mile tempo runs were getting old.  Of course, this and all my remaining workouts until the marathon have been programmed and scheduled into Rudy.  Workout planning and scheduling?  You bet I love that, too.

 

One last thing.  Commit this number to memory: 30787.  If you see a guy in the Chicago Marathon finish area with that bib number, buy him a beer immediately.  Something good, too.  Nothing mass-market or lager-y. 

 

[21] Downtown Double 30K Race Report

I'm going to make this short and sweet. This was a no frills race, and I didn't enjoy it much, so it's probably best if I don't go on at length complaining.

Pre-race

I got up in plenty of time.  I had every intention of starting my day with a healthy, delicious can of sardines and some heavy crackers.  However, my body doesn't like eating anything -- never mind stinky, oily fish -- first thing in the morning.  Instead, I chowed down some almond butter and Ezekiel bread.  I noticed it was raining.

It rained on the drive down, and I smiled because my compulsive punctuality got me near the muster point in enough time to park under an overpass.  I figured I could dry off and change into a dry shirt, which I was smart enough to have packed for once.  After killing a little time, listening to my iPod and then talking with some other runners, I decided to go warm up.  I sipped a little more water, lathered myself up with some Bodyglide, and hit the road.  The weather was pleasant; the rain kept me nice and cool.  I ran from where I parked, around and around pseudo-randomly, and then back to the starting area.  All told, I ran a little over a mile.  That would get me 20 miles for the day, since I knew I probably would not want to run afterward.  Spoiler alert: I was right.

Lap 1

As the starting gun approached, I noticed my Polar RS200 was dying.  Water was getting into the case, and the display was going all wonky.  Within 2 minutes, the screen was blank.  I'm drying it out as I write this, but I think it's finally dead.  This was the cherry on the ice cream sundae of my Sunday.


The Downtown Doubler, as the name suggests, is a two-headed hydra of a race.  You can run the 15K, as most people did, or you can do it a second time and make it 30K.  Since I needed to do 20 miles, you know what race I did.  Everything was great for the first several miles.  The course was flat and straight, which got to be boring, but at this stage of the race [before the first turn-around], life was good.  Heading to the water tower, around mile 3 or so, I felt good and drank just one cup at the first water stop.  Then, from here, we ran into Cox's Park.

Backing up a tad to pre-race, there were only two portable toilets to serve the couple hundred runners, so there was a line.  Like the father of a first grader I am, I decided to get in line for a prophylactic pee -- go now or you'll regret it later --  but we ran out of time. Since there was no chip time -- just gun time -- we had to run, and off I went knowing I'd have to whiz later.  A wise guy next to me said, "Oh well, we're going to be wet anyway."  As the miles piled on, I couldn't get rid of the thought of just peeing my pants and letting the rain wash it away.

Anyway, back to the race.  I finally got my chance to pee at the turn-around, around mile 4 or 5, at the bathrooms in Cox's Park.  I took the opportunity to eat a Gu, also, and wash it down with some sink water.

The run back to the starting line was uneventful.

Lap 2

Just like the unfortunate experience I had with the Derby Marathon, after passing the finish line for the first time, I was dismayed [though not surprised] to find that the vast bulk of my fellow runners were calling it a day after 15 kilometers.  The hardy few doing the 30K were few and far between.  I was running hella slow, too, so I was very lonely in the back of the pack.  The race got boring.  The course didn't vary much -- straight and flat as I said before -- so my mind could really focus on what was going on in my body.  My hip flexors were on fire.  My back ached.  Intermittent pains in my upper body were annoying but not debilitating, and something was starting to happen in my ankles.  At mile 12, I took my first walk break, and I took brief walk breaks every two miles after that.  This sucked.  Did I mention that it was raining?

In the last two miles, I couldn't stop thinking about how stupid this all was.  20 miles is a stupid distance to run in marathon training.  I kept thinking, "This is it. You are not going to run this far again until Chicago. And when you are done here, you'd still have a 10K to run at Chicago!"  I sank into despair.  I caught a glimpse of just how much it's going to hurt after I finish up there.

Post race

Official time: 3:30'08.9".  Bloody awful.

The finish line was a lonely place.  There were few people -- besides race volunteers -- hanging around.  It had rained off and on for the whole three-plus hours of the race, and I guess that had something to do with the dearth of spectators, but still, it was a lonely, lonely finish line.  Before the tore everything down, I grabbed a scrap of a bagel, a granola bar, and two little dixie cups of Gatorade and started limping toward my car.  I had to keep moving so that my hamstrings wouldn't degenerate into charlie horses.  I stretched a little at the car and changed into dry clothes and headed home.

Final thoughts

This is a no-frills race.  There's no swag apart from a long sleeve technical shirt.  There are no crowds.   The only reason I wanted to do this race at all is because it was free and I had to run 20 anyway.  Might as well get a shirt out of the deal, right.  I don't know whether I will run it [the 15K] again, but you never know.

[23] Oh deer

ORN:  This dark, crisp morning, I ran my last long tempo run of the FIRST marathon plan.  I ran eight miles in 1:17'42", which wasn't great when you consider my target pace was 9'19".  Still, for me, for the hilly course I ran, I am not complaining.  Some of my mile splits were pretty good.  You can tell in the list below where the hills were killing me and when I dug deep and fought back.  Ideally, these would have been consistent; ideally, the course would have been flat and free beer would have been waiting for me at the end.  Da splits:

1. 9'37"
2. 9'26"
3. 9'25"
4. 9'54"
5. 10'04" <-- oof!
6. 9'40"
7. 9'58" <-- huurrggg!
8. 9'34"

The highlight of today's run was the young deer that scared the manure out of me around the sixth mile.  I was plodding along, listening to my watch tell me to run faster, like it had for the previous hour or so, when I saw these blue-green phosphorescent lights in the woods at my eye-level.  Plainly, they were animal eyes staring back at me.  I thought to myself, "Wow. Those are too high off the ground and far apart to be a raccoon and too big to be a cat.  WTF?"  My curiosity held the beam of my headlamp fixed on the shapeless nothing that owned the eyes, and the malevolent void in the trees kept its gaze fixed on me.  I'm sure the animal was probably thinking the same thing I was -- WTF?  Will that thing eat me?  But it didn't move as I drew closer.  It just stared.  And so did I. 

 

I didn't soil my armor until -- VOOM! -- it suddenly turned and sped off, barely eight feet away from me, and I recognized it was a massive doe.  In an instant, every YouTube video of a crazed deer attacking somebody flashed before my eyes, and my heart flopped around like a fish at the bottom of a boat.  In that second, I knew I was going to die; a deer was going to kick my arsch.  At least I had my Road ID on so my hoof-marked corpse would be easily identified.  Then, a second-and-a-half later, it was all over.  The doe had disappeared through the brush toward safety, and my fear response was back in check.  "I'm totally blogging this," I thought as I lumbered on.

 

Warning: the rest of this post is going to be bragging.  This week is my peak week, and so far I have been rocking it.  I started my week with an easy recovery run after running 15 miles on Sunday.  I nailed my 10x400 intervals on Tuesday.  On Wednesday, I returned to the pool after a long absence and did laps [not so great, performance-wise, but yayyy pool!]  Then yesterday, I did a hard 30 minutes on a stationary bike.  My point is that I have worked out, either cross-trained or ran, every day this week, and every workout was purposeful and quality.  [We can debate the "quality" of Monday's run over strong, heavy beer.  You're buying.] 

 

Of course, I'm not done with the week yet.  I still have Sunday's long run to do, the Downtown Doubler 30K, which I am going to stretch into my final 20-miler before the marathon.  I am not worried about this race one bit; in fact I am looking forward to it.  The course is flat as can be, apart from the "hill repeat" at the Water Tower, and quite lovely -- mostly running along River Road.  I ought to blaze through it.  In fact, it'll be the perfect test of my fitness level for Chicago since Chicago's course is flat, too.  [Thanks to Helga for letting me have her registration. I wasn't planning on running this, but she had a last-minute schedule conflict.]

 

[26] Caution: hubris ahead

ORN:  This morning, feeling like twenty bucks, I ran a 10x400 interval workout and pwned it.  I smacked it around and made it call me uncle.  I gave the track noogies and purple nurples.  With a target time of 1'51", I am proud to say I was both remarkably close to the target and reasonably consistent.  I am so full of myself right now, I better just give you the splits before I burst into song.

1. 2'06" <-- waking up
2. 1'53"
3. 1'53"
4. 1'56"
5. 1'55"
6. 1'49"
7. 1'54"
8. 1'53"
9. 1'53"
10. 1'50" <-- how's that for awesome?

Is it the chocolate milk?  Is it my after-workout breakfasts of sardines and crackers?  Is it the shoes?  What is it that makes me so awesome?  I wish I knew, friends.  But today was a great workout, and I hope it marks the beginning of a great day.  I've got a American Cancer Society fundraiser luncheon here at work, complete with a raffle and silent auction, and I'm hoping to raise about a million bucks.  I'm going to eat the hell out of some fried chicken and starch and fat and bacon.  I've earned it.  Big, big day. 

[27] Recovering

ORN:  By way of a recovery run, I hit the streets of downtown Louisville for a quick and easy thirty minutes.  The key word here was easy.  Every time I felt the urge to surge, I dialed it back a bit.  The point of a recovery run, I have read, is to get acquainted with running in a fatigued state.  If that is so, then this workout was an unqualified success.  Since yesterday's 15, I have been achy and creaky, particularly my feet.  But running today felt good.  Running three miles along the river was a great way to spend part of my lunch hour, even with the 77° heat.  I sometimes regret going to the Chinese restaurant and gorging myself on fried pork dumplings; I never regret a run.

 

It's too early to tell whether chocolate milk is helping me recover or not.  But I never regret ingesting chocolate either, so let the research continue.  I drank another bottle after today's run, though I am sure I didn't need it.

 

If you had every intention of going to Chicago to cheer me on, but then thought, "Meh," now my results can come right to you.  You won't even have to smell me or buy me a beer afterward.  You can have email or text messages delivered as I cross various checkpoints along the course by signing up for Chicago Marathon runner tracking.  I'm registered as Ed Hammerbeck, and I predict will be finishing right behind Deena Kastor give or take three hours.  You heard it here.

 

[28] Happy Sunday

ORN: This morning, I ran 15 miles in 2:36'30".  I started out with a strong, marathon pace, but the hills got the better of me.  I slowed way down to my usual LSD pace after five miles or so.  The morning was lovely and cool and only got to be warm in the last 20 minutes or so.  After reading about the merits of chocolate milk as a recovery drink in Runners' World and online, I tried using it today.  We'll see how that works.  Milk kinda makes my tummy rumbly, so I'm not loving it right now.  Still, chocolate is yummy.  Can't complain there.

I'm thinking a lot about Chicago, but I am thinking more about my next race -- the Downtown Doubler 30K next weekend -- and future races.  I'm signed up for the Derby Festival miniMarathon in April, but I don't know whether or not to do the Fleet Feet winter race series and/or the Triple Crown in the spring.  That's a lot of races.  I'm not sure I want to do any or all of them.  I'm happy with the races I have scheduled, but I know I need to have regular milestones to stay on the road.  I'm not going to decide this today, but it's on my mind.

This coming week is my last big mileage week before I taper.  Thank the running gods.  I think I might end up doing over 40, which ain't much for a marathoner, but that's all on three days.  And then there's the cross training....

[30] How to be my scream team

ORN:  Did 45 minutes on a stationary bike Thursday, but who cares about that?  Today, I ran a 10 mile tempo run, just like Ryan Hall, except he does 18 mile tempo runs in the mountains at near a 5'00"/mile pace.  I managed to squeak out a tenner in 1:37'25", a 9'44" average pace.  Still, Ryan Hall and I... like this [crosses fingers.]  I'm feeling full of myself because that's a PR for me, beating my previous best time for 10 miles by over four minutes.  [happy dance]  I was queasy as heck about an hour afterward, but a Wasa cracker and some water helped settle my tummy.  I couldn't imagine eating the sardines I had packed for breakfast.  Squick.  Anyhoozer, go me and my big PR.

My secret?  Don't tell Ryan, but I had a bottle of Delirium Nocturnum after dinner last night.  That was the carb-loading rocket fuel I needed to get over all those lousy hills.

I'm tapped out on things to write about these days.  I'm grateful that a little birdie came along to offer this suggestion:  What do you like and dislike from spectators at a race?  My experience with races where spectators line the route for the whole course is limited to three events, but one really doesn't count because the spectators were pretty thin along the course except around the start/finish and in some of the parks.  Here are some things I like.

1. More cowbell.  Cowbells are loud and obnoxious, but I have found that when they are rung by enthusiastic people, they can wake me up out of my mid-race fog.  I got a fever, and the only prescription... is more cowbell!  Whistles and other noise makers are good, too.
2. Bands.  As I was nearing the turnaround point in the 2007 Louisville Half Marathon, my first ever, there was a group of youths from a local marching band pounding out some phat beats.  It was such an uplifting moment at a key point in the race that I wanted to stop and listen. Instead, I lifted my feet and got through the next few miles with higher spirits.  The Derby Festival marathon and half marathon feature a number of bands along the route, including a jazz band around mile 11 or 12.  The more, the merrier, I say.
3. Data-aware cheerleaders, for lack of a better term.  No, these aren't teenage girls from MIT wearing short skirts and bucky ball pom-poms, but nice folks with access to a list of bib numbers and names.  As you run by, they quickly look you up and cheer out your name.  Awesome, especially if you don't have a posse. [Like many, I like to travel light.]  I love it much more than the people who just cheer for their Linda or Stan and then spend the rest of the day in their lawn chairs. 
4. Orange people.  No, I'm not talking about Oompa Loompas.  Some people have shown up at my races and handed out orange slices.  They aren't official race volunteers, just nice people showing compassion.  Much appreciated.
5. People shouting out how great I look or how awesome I am.  This is much better than hearing "Just a couple more miles," especially when you are near the split at a dual event, and I actually have 15 more miles and not two.  Please don't throw out numbers.  I know precisely how much more I have to endure. 
6. Spontaneous high fivers.  These people just line the route and hold their hands out giving high-fives to racers.  I like it, especially when kids do it, but I hope they have a bucket of hand sanitizer nearby.  We runners can be a slimy lot.
7. The drinkers.  There's a tribe of frat boys at the Derby Festival races, somewhere along Southern Parkway, bearing the sign "As long as you run, we drink."  They have coolers of beer and, for all I know, drink all morning.  At the other end of the spectrum are gangs of more elegant people parking themselves along the route, sipping mimosas, and toasting us with great civility as we go by.  This phenomenon is a complicated one for me.  On the one hand, I like it, but I also wish they would offer me a drink.  They never do, so I also hate it.   Yet, the drinkers remind me that the beer tent awaits me at the finish line.  Here I come, Duffman!
8. The first aid people.  During my marathon, there was a group of people [nurses?] around mile 18 handing out gobs of petroleum jelly and bandages.  They'd also bind up blisters for you.  Another group later on handed out single-use tubes of Chamois Butt'r.  Thank you people!  You rock!

I could write another blog post about what I hate from spectators, but that's a post for another day.  Let's keep things positive, shall we?  At this stage of the training season, the more positive, the better, I say.

[32] Enough with the lemons already

ORN:  Today, like a total moron, I ran 3x1600 intervals during the heat of the day.  And my performance reflects precisely how dumb that was, how many workouts I have skipped lately, and how poorly I have been eating.  The splits are below.  They look more like 3xOneMileTempoRuns than 1600s.  Even my best one was nearly twenty seconds over my target.  Oh well.

1. 8'09"
2. 8'24"
3. 8'34"

This weekend was a total wash, almost literally.  I went camping with some friends and Little One.  On Sunday, I was supposed to do 18 miles with my buddy Chris, the guy who shanghaied me into running Chicago with him [what seems like] about 12 years ago.  But since Wifey was at home with the bronchitis, I didn't feel right leaving my offspring with the other womenfolk for three-plus hours.  They encouraged me to go, saying it takes a village and all that, but I decided not to run and be the responsible Dad.  I told them, and myself, I would run on Monday, after going home.

 

The say if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.  Ha.

 

It rained all morning Sunday.  So Chris got soaked during his 18 miler.  I'm kinda glad I missed out on that.  Later, it dried up a tad, but overnight, the clouds burst and soaked the campsite through and through.  Chris's family, all four of them, piled into the dry pop-up with Little One and I when their tent became aquatic.  [The other couple and their kids, in a tent they borrowed from Wifey and I, were dry as a bone BTW.]  Nobody slept well, and Monday was spent cleaning and packing up for the soggy trip home. 

 

Wifey, as luck would have it, went to the emergency room over the weekend when her bronchitis took a turn for the worse.  So by Monday, she was literally sick and tired and not particularly interested in my misfortunes.  We were an unhappy lot.  Whatever energy I had in reserve for my planned 20, I spent it cleaning the camper and all our gear & clothes. 

 

It just goes to show you, when life hands you lemons, you make lemonade.  But usually your hands are covered in little paper cuts, so it hurts like the dickens, and you catch salmonella from the lemons, which were dirty, and cholera from the water, which somebody crapped in.  But maybe I am overly cynical.

 

[37] Did you do something with your hair?

ORN:  This morning, despite the siren song of my snuggly-wuggly bed, I got up and ran 6.2 miles in 1:01'33", which isn't very impressive considering this was supposed to be a tempo run.  Whatever.  I'm in a bit of a slump, speed-wise, and I'm not very upset about it.  I just don't care about speed right now; I'm more concerned about just getting the workouts done and surviving Chicago.  Today though, while I was nice and speedy for the first half of the run, after the midpoint, I was spent.  I struggled up hill after hill.  My consolation for all this hilly running, I tell myself, is that I will be running alongside the Kenyans in Chicago next month.  The marathon course is world-famous for its flatness, so I ought to breeze through it, right?  Right?

 

I am an RSS feed junky, so almost never look at the sites I follow in their native habitat, mine included.  All that content gets aggregated in Google Reader, and I plow through megatons of content in about 20 minutes.  This system works for me, but there's a downside.  For example, I didn't notice that at some point in the last few months [?] my blog had succumbed to BlogSpot's infamous "sidebar" problem.  This problem affects certain BlogSpot themes, and the primary symptom is that the sidebar seems to disappear.  Actually, it flops down to the very bottom of the page, below all the posts, due to an unfortunate combination of CSS and HTML and gremlins.  As I discovered, this is a notoriously difficult problem for the casual site administrator [me] to troubleshoot.  After spending a couple hours on it, in five and ten minute spurts over the last week or two, and after messing with my old theme until it was useless, last night I threw in the towel.  I totally blew away the theme I had been using for years, and all the accumulated cruft it contained, and started fresh with a new theme.  I found it for free out there somewhere so, who knows, it may be full of viruses.  The important thing is now my site behaves itself.

 

So my site looks different.  Don't panic.  If you look more carefully, you'll notice some of the sidebar widgets are missing or different.  Relax.  I'll get around to fixing everything sometime before the singularity or Rapture, whichever comes first.  [If you get taken up in the Rapture, can I have your Garmin?]

 

Oh, and we're scrutinizing my site in boring, long-winded detail, you might notice the Just Socks link on the right hand side.  Just Socks is associated with my favorite local running store, Ken Combs Running Store, and they are the official vendor for the Runners' Lounge WrightSocks promotion.  For a limited time only, if you enter the code Runners' Lounge when you check out, you can buy two pairs of WrightSocks and get a third pair free.  Their usual deal is buy five get one free, so there's your deal.  Check them out if you need socks.

 

Disclosure: WrightSocks sent me six pairs of free socks to review recently.  Also, Just Socks is compensating me for the link with discounts and warm cookies [I hope].  Look, I'm not getting rich off this shilling, but you should know when somebody whose stuff you're reading is on the take.  Take whatever I say about anything with a grain of salt.  And a lime wedge.  Tequila!

 

[39] Out of hibernation

ORN:  This morning, I ran seven miles in 1:13'38".  This is amazing if you consider that I spent the majority of the previous three days in bed.  I don't know what strain of plague I had, but it sucked.  I had a skull-splitting headache for three solid days.  Consider also the fatigue, lightheadedness, hot-and-cold fever-stuff, and hard-to-manage hair:  I haven't had the best week ever.  I treated my affliction with my never-fail home remedy: hibernation.  I slept and slept until I felt better.  And what do you know?  This morning, I awoke and felt great.  I had planned an interval workout [1x1000, 1x2000, 2x1000] but chose not to push my luck.  Instead, I ran seven hilly miles at a comfortably earnest pace -- not tempo pace, but not easy either.

 

It wasn't just me.  The whole family was sick.  We were all down with different misfortunes.  Wifey was diagnosed with bronchitis, and I'm counting my lucky stars I didn't catch that.  I hate bronchitis.  Little One had a bad cough too, but she pulled through without needing a trip to the doctor.  Now, I'm thinking we ought to burn all our sheets and night clothes -- just to be sure this crap doesn't come back.   Summer colds suck.

 

What especially sucked about being sick was that the weather, lately, has been almost perfect for running.  It's been unseasonably cool in the mornings and moderately warm and breezy in the afternoons.  I think one morning it was down below 50°.  Oh well.  I mustn't complain.  I only missed one workout; I am thankful I only missed the one.