More 800s at the track on Tuesday night. Dutch upped his volume from 6 the week before to 8 this time while I was gonna do another 10. After a relatively tough weekend of hills, I figured it might be in my best interest to run the first half of my workout with Dutch and his slightly more manageable pace and then, if I felt ok, open it up a bit in the 2nd half to ensure finishing with the shortness of breath I'm so fond of. This worked out well.

2:46
2:46
2:44
2:43
2:41
--
2:32
2:32
2:29
2:28
2:24

Once again, these were on our 785m loop, so add a few seconds for a true 800. As I hobbled around towards Dutch after the last one, I hear him state "Oh geez, is Todd getting into a fight?" Sure enough Todd-meister is about 50 yards away arguing with a motley group of dudes (and one chick) who apparently watched their mutt take a dump on the track and then walked away without picking it up. Todd watched too and was arguing with the 4-5 of them to pick it up. As I walk over to tell Todd to think this through (how's that for some alliteration?), I hear the big guy in the group say something to the affect of "we don't have anything to pick it up with" before pulling out a bag one might use to, I dunno, pick up dog crap, tossing it at Todd and saying "why don't YOU pick it up?" They start walking away, probably to go cook some meth, Todd keeps jawing while one guy stays back and asks Todd (now flanked by Dutch and Johnny...hey, where the hell is Patrick?! The three of us combine to weigh like 300 lbs...) if we're "going to jump him."

After we jumped him, we jogged back to the cars and called it an evening.

------

62 minutes of nearly 9 miles Wednesday...this day will see increased mileage in the coming weeks if my body holds up.

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Patrick and I have been going back and forth on the topic of hill running and just what the hell we should be doing, and most importantly, where.

If I had my druthers I'd drive out to one of the mountains around here and blast some hills on the soft dirt and in the shade. But that's not a cost-feasible solution, so I look elsewhere. My traditional hill was the Garfield Bridge, about 2 miles from my apt (allowing decent warmup/cooldown time). I like the hill because it's about half a mile long, and while my longest charge doesn't exceed a quarter mile (yet), it's good to know I can get up to half a mile if I so chose to do so. It's also a good grade. The downside is, well, everything else. You get a nice sight line on the recovery downhill, but you're basically on a fairly populated bridge, with cars and buses whizzing past you at high speeds, some of which feeling motivated to yell obscenities at you because you're in better shape than they are. It's also all concrete.

On Monday runs though I find myself trudging up the hill behind Pike Place Market en route to my apartment, and thought I'd give it a shot this time around for Thursday charges instead of the bridge. It's about 1.5 miles from my apt, enough time to warmup/cooldown, and the grade is similar. It's also ~.4 miles in length, so there's room for modification if I feel the need to lengthen the charge.

Prior to the workout I measured out what .25 miles would be, making this charge just a bit longer than the Garfield Bridge hill charges I did last week (.23 miles).

Same easy/med/hard format.

1:49
1:38
1:28
--
1:47
1:37
1:30
--
1:47
1:35
1:24

Will I return? Tough to say...perhaps, but I definitely won't be adding it to my "favorite runs in Seattle" list anytime soon. To put it mildly, there are a number of tweekers at the top of the hill, most of which are covered in scabs from the daily scuffles they probably find themselves getting into. The kind of place where bike cops feel obligated to patrol non-stop and are rarely bored doing so.

Perhaps next week I'll bring my ish to work with me and head out to Green Lake and take on the summer hill that Patrick now prefers. In a park, it's a dirt trail, you can do the downhill recovery on more-forgiving grass, there's no vehicles giving you second hand smoke and insults, there are only a fraction of the tallboy fans, and I *hear* the hill is long enough for me. Still...I feel I drive enough as it is and was hoping to avoid the act. A good hill trumps this though.

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Saturday morning was 17 miles through a large portion of the city, run at nearly a precise 7:00 pace. I'm awesome.

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This morning was 13ish miles at Cougar Mtn with Dutch. Nearly 2 hours of running--about the same amount of time on my feet as the day before--but obviously much slower thanks to the muscle-building hills. At one junction we were running up the "Z-Killer x 10" hill I wrote about running down at last week's 10.4 mile race. I think it took like 15 minutes to get up it but felt 3 times that.

Not sure if I'm allowed to tell you this, but Patrick spent his Sunday morning running ass-out nude at the Bare Buns Run on Tiger Mountain. I...don't know what to say. I hope he enjoyed himself...but not too much, ifyaknowwhatimeanhuhhuhhuhhuhhuh.

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Big Daddy's famous again! Or...at least as famous as he was back in the good ol' days when the Chico ER and Ed Booth would write 500 word articles on my age 12 little league team. 16 years later...another clipping for the scrapbook, courtesy of Tim Pfarr and the Issaquah Press! You'll probably need to blow up that first image to see my awesome quote.









Link to PDF file (not sure if this link will still work next week...we'll see!)

And yes Patrick, I cropped the results list so that you and Katie would also be rep'd.

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After Saturday's race, during the awards thing, Patrick noticed some red Cougar Mountain Trail Series socks being awarded. And for whatever reason he desperately wanted a pair. All participants receive a free pair of blue & black socks just for running the race, but these were apparently extra special/rare red socks and Patrick was jonesing for them. I don't know why, but it seems he wants me to tell everybody. Even though he has his own site.

Umm, did I leave anything out there, "Master P"?

What a stupid post.

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The weekend wound up being a good one as I took runner-up status at the Cougar Mountain 10(.4) miler on Saturday, and then dusted off 12ish more Cougar Mtn miles with Dutch in the simultaneously cool and hot Sunday morning.

Saturday's race went about as well as I could have hoped as the only person who finished ahead of me was local legend Uli Steidl (by nearly 6 minutes!), and who knows but I'm perfectly fine assuming was probably running at half speed. It was cool though to see him around the 10 mile mark (~half mile from the finish) with his dog, presumably on a cool down run of sorts. He told me there were only a couple minutes left (kinder words I have never heard) and then ran behind me as I finished, unknowingly pushing me to a more solid pace than I probably would have done knowing I had 2nd place more or less locked up. I can't half-ass it in front of him! Or his dog!

There was a 7.5 mile race a few weeks back that I missed (#2 in the series), but I was at the first race of the series, a 5 miler back in May. What I learned from that race was that I should be a bit more aggressive in the opening half mile or so before the race turns onto the (always fun) single track, where you get kinda stuck behind guys and it's hard to move up the ranks. Before I knew it, the guys at the front of the line were slowly pulling away and there I was, 25 deep, behind some high school kid who blew his wad in the opening sprint and was now shuffling along at a 9 minute pace.

So this time I went out a bit harder and came into the single track in 11th place (yes, I counted). Uli was in front and quickly pulling away, but I could see everyone from #2 to #10 in our little line. I had no idea who anyone was aside from Uli, but the fact that the #2 guy was only 20 yards in front of me, leading this pack of ours, told me he was beatable. I passed people here and there (typically on uphill portions) and mentally counted down my place, hypothesizing that 2nd place *could* get me a pair of shoes. Some guy cramped up around the 2 or 3 mile mark and made a big show of it, stopping immediately and causing a near pileup that I deftly maneuvered around, leap-frogging 2 or 3 spots and putting myself in 5th or so. I passed the #3 guy shortly before the halfway mark water stop (no thanks) and entered a long downhill portion right on the tail of the #2 guy.

Now another aside...

Prior to the race, a club friend had described the course in some detail to me and some others, letting us know where hills were, where downhills were, etc. At the time I was kinda dimly nodding my head, but it ended up being wonderful information. What I learned was there was a "short steep uphill" around the halfway mark which was followed by a long, pretty-severe downhill, which was then followed by a nearly as severe uphill. This would take you to around mile 8ish, at which point it mostly flattened out en route to the finish. What I had figured out in those first 5 miles was that while most people in my company were much better downhill runners, I was killing them on uphills. People would put a few seconds on me in a 200m stretch of downhill, and then I'd make it all up over a span of the first 50 meters of uphill.

Armed with this knowledge, and the knowledge of what laid ahead (severe downhill, then severe uphill), I relaxed a bit, mentally. #2 was right in front of me, and I couldn't hear anyone behind me. I reminded myself that this guy would pull away a bit on this downhill but under no circumstances was I to try and go with him, because every step he pulled away I'd gain back in half the time on the following uphill. This self-assuredness was admittedly kind of new to me, and I distinctly remember a sort of calm coming over me, as if the race had already been run, I'd already gotten 2nd, and we were just going through the motions.

Sure enough, he slowly started pulling away. I had to hand it to him, he was moving on the downhills. I think I tend to be a bit more cautious on these portions. I always feel like I'm on the cusp of losing control, so I force myself to have heavy feet and am constantly feeling like I'm braking. The guys around me just seemed to be galloping on the downhills. As this guy slowly pulled away, about halfway down this massively multi-switchback trail (PV runners...it was literally like racing down Z-Killer, but about 10 times longer and in near complete shade) I started hearing the rumbling of feet behind me. Expectantly, they were closing on me. Since there was a switchback every 50 yards or so, I glanced up and saw two guys. I forced myself to ignore it. If the guy in front of me was DOA, these guys had even less of a chance.

And just like clockwork, I hit the bottom, started climbing, and almost immediately made up all the ground I lost. I passed #2 and pressed on for another couple minutes, just to make sure he didn't get any ideas. From there on out, I was completely secure in the expectation I'd get 2nd place and I was now running for as fast a time as possible. I stopped for ~20 seconds at the final water stop ("Uli's only like 4 minutes ahead of you!" they'd exclaim and then try to stifle the laughter. Thanks guys.).

Fast forward to about the 10 mile mark and there's Uli with his dog. Nipples burning, I bring it home. 3rd comes in about a minute after me and 4th shortly after him.

The grand prize at these races is a free pair of Vasque trail shoes, and I kind of assumed Uli would defer the prize to 2nd place since he probably doesn't need free shoes (well...really, none of us NEED new shoes, but he needs them the least). Sure enough, Uli left before the awards started, so the prize dropped into my lap so to speak, leaving me this checklist in my head:

Prizes/awards/swag from 3 trail races
Couple technical shirts
Trail socks
Running shorts
Huge medal
4gb Zune media player
Hydration belt
Carton of Endurox
Camelback
Free pair of Vasque trail shoes (*almost* two pair!)
Visor (still to be worn cause I look like a choad in it)
Mental enjoyment from running in gorgeous nature

Prizes/awards/swag from about 3 YEARS of road races
Countless ugly participation shirts
Case of some sport recovery drink, the brand I can't recall
Kinda cheap hydration belt
Handful of medals/plaques/trophies
$75 gift certificate to a Duke's Chowderhouse (equaled one dinner out with The Roommate)
Running bag (because it was close to my birthday)
Dopey orange running hat (because it was close to my birthday)
Car smog in my lungs and eyes

And it's "common knowledge" that trail races are typically run more on the cheap. They don't charge as much, there are more hippy-dippy runners instead of the SUV suburbanites, it's more "bare bones" than a typical road race in the city, what with their $35 5K fees, or $85 half marathon fees, etc. And yet the 3 trail races I've done have made me a much richer man than the 317 road races I've done. So maybe there is something to this whole trail thing.

Not that I'm solely about the $$$. But this ish costs money, and nuthin beats free stuff. Well, mostly nuthin.

The next day I got back out there with Dutch for some more slow hilly miles. Good times. Felt achy for a few hours after both runs this weekend, but the groin pain seems to have actually subsided over the past couple days, where I was just hoping it wouldn't get worse. I think the fact that it was ~25 weekend miles, all on soft dirt instead of hard concrete death, played a small role in this fact.

Gotta jet now for ~7-8 miles on hot concrete death, so we'll see how I respond.

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It was a joyous celebration at the track as Dutch made his long-awaited (by me at least) return to the club, ending his 15 month sabbatical with our personal favorite workout...good ol' 800s. Coach apparently forgot to bring the cake, and made us do the workout instead of stand around and party, which kinda put a damper on the celebration, but it was a good time all the same.

My job entailed "8-10" reps w/90 seconds rest while coach recommended Dutch (pictured) more or less ease his way into it with only 6. We'd do the old-school not-quite-800-meter lap around the softball fields, which now included a little extra bit around a new and might I add fully-populated skate park. The consistency was amazing, it seemed everyone had that stereotypical sk8erboi look down pat, while I'm sure they were equally impressed with my yellow dri-fit shirt and short shorts.

Anyway, I estimated the new route on gmap-pedometer to be 785 meters instead of 760...so we're closing in. Split times, add ~3 seconds for 800m equivalent:

2:38
2:39
2:36
2:36
2:37
2:36
2:36
2:35
2:34
2:31 (2:36 avg)

Not quite as fast as the seemingly ridiculous times I was posting in prep for Boston (~2:26-2:28 760m avg), but I'm not even stressing that.

I felt...merely OK, and towards the end could definitely feel the strain on my nether regions. As I started the 8th rep, I was contemplating ending the workout when I finished it. And had I been alone, this is the sort of thing I definitely would have done. Assuming I even got to #8. But I was pretty able to convince myself to just run two more.

Dutch was surprisingly only 6-8 seconds behind me on his 6 reps and plans to bump up the volume slowly over the coming weeks. Since he's not fat like me, I trust he'll be able to bounce back pretty quickly, which is good because currently he's sort of in no man's land, in between me and the group of fellas behind me.

The important thing is the club got one man deeper, and many of us will be better off for it.

--------------------

After an 8 miler on Wednesday, the hills began last night, and I felt unprepared for them as I played mental games with myself, tricking my limbs to change into running clothes and bribing my hands to put on the appropriate shoes and tie them in a workable manner. One of those days where you feel you need someone to literally pick you up and place you outside while locking the door behind you to get going. My weakened groin acreage wasn't helping the motivation either; I was unsure how it would respond to the 9-rep workout I prefer to do on Garfield Bridge. And ya see, there's this 10 mile trail run I want to do on Saturday...and the other day Dutch convinced me (more like demanded and I immediately caved) to run the Seattle Running Company Sunday morning trail run Sunday morning. So I had a big weekend ahead of me...a weekend that hinged on the well-being of my own private Idaho.

On top of that, my slightly new hill workout is a little longer than before. I was going to add about .05 miles to the charge (~.18 to ~.23 miles). Not much, it would only make each charge 14-18 seconds longer, but it was part of a plan to slowly increase my charge distances in an attempt to become badass at hills. My "slow" rep went from an avg. of 1:30 to 1:48, my "medium" rep went from about 1:15 to about 1:30, and the hard one went from about 1:05 to about 1:20.

I was only planning on doing 6 charges this time to spare my groin and leave a little left for Saturday, but I found myself feeling pretty good during it, and not only wrapped up the whole workout, but put up consistent negative splits on each rep.

1:47 - easy
1:34 - med
1:22 - hard
1:45 - easy
1:30 - med
1:20 - hard
1:42 - easy
1:27 - med
1:15 - hard

Whoooo

-------------------

Here's to my having something fun to write about after this weekend.

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After my 16.25 miler Saturday morning/afternoon (7:03 pace), my legs were behaving as if I had put them through a marathon, or a [insert physically activity that would tire a pair of legs more than a 16.25 mile run]. The pain is still there, though I *do* believe it's on its way out. Sunday's "maybe" run turned into a "uhh, most likely NOT" run and at this very moment I've almost forgotten about the pain entirely. This will not be the case in 45 minutes when my shoes are on and I'm pounding the pavement, but I can feel the progress, however slow and pathetic.

Due to running an errand early Saturday morning, I didn't join the club and thus didn't get the run out of the way before 10am. The late start saw me wrapping things up shortly after noon, and with the relatively toasty weather I'm not quite used to (almost 80!), articles of clothing had to be shed about halfway through, much to the horror of those otherwise unsuspecting poor folks near Discovery Park out for their late-morning walk. Sorry folks. I am pleased to report though that my sweat glands are all fully operational.

Sunday's cancellation was also aided by the 4+ hour Mariner game I attended with great seats (thanks Terry!) alongside Patrick, which included free breakfast buffet leftovers of sausage/bacon/home fries which caused me to quick become the most popular guy in the section (thanks Terry!), and an invigorating conversation between Patrick and the huge-breasted Tiger "fan" to his right about the various responsibilities of the Mariner groundscrew (thanks Patrick!). 15 innings later, the Mariners dropped another one and I was pretty darn certain I would not be running later. 25 minutes later and there I am, reading about the greatest tennis match in the history of the solar system* (seriously, just watching the cruddy 320/240 highlights on ESPN gave me goosebumps), televised on a channel I actually get while I was watching the Mariners put their 3rd string catcher on the mound while Patrick whined about how boring baseball is, especially when it goes 15 innings and the home team can only be bothered to grind out 6 basehits.


So physically I'm making meager gains, but mentally I'm getting pretty ramped up thanks to the just-completed T&F Olympic Team Trials. Nothing gets my blood going like a good 5000m or 10000m race. Or even a boring 5000m/10000m race. I love 'em all. And then I might stumble upon Nick Symmonds dropping the hammer in the final 100m of an awesome 800m final, or inadvertently turn the TV on just as the 1500m final begins. Suffering through the occasional 100m or 110m hurdles race that inexplicably takes 15 minutes of TV time to complete is a small price to pay. Okay, it's not a small price, but it is a price I'm willing to pay.

Then NBC switches over to swimming, I hear the words "Michael Phelps" 9 times in the first 45 seconds, and I come out of my daze ready to turn the TV off for the night.

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I've been dealing with a couple aches in the pelvic/groin area lately (shutup) that have affected my training for the not better. It had been steadily growing in intensity the past couple weeks, but after last Wednesday's run (6/25), a 10ish miler I perhaps stupidly did at sub-7:00 pace, I decided to finally do something about it. With a half marathon pacing responsibility (and in all, a planned 20 miler day) slated for Sunday, I decided to cut running out for three whole days in a row. A rarity for me, I usually hate doing back to back days off, but I felt it was needed. So I sat on my keister Thurs-Sat and by Saturday's trip to the expo to pick up my shteez (free shoes rule! oversized pacing t-shirts don't!), I actually felt better. I hadn't run on it, but I couldn't feel anything while walking around; after Wednesday's run just sitting on the couch was a little unpleasant.

Sunday morning I paced the 2nd half of the half marathon*, and the plan was to double back on the marathon course until I caught Patrick (who was running the full marathon at 8:01 pace, aka a 3:30 marathon) and bring it home with him, adding another 12-13 miles, putting me at around 20 for the day.


The day itself was a hot one, but I doubled back as the plan dictated and soon enough my pelvic/groin area started whining, more or less negating the rest I gave it the three days prior.

I reached the 20 miles I planned on hitting for the day, but sadly I didn't expect to be gingerly walking to my car afterwards, feeling just as sore as I did after Wednesday's 10.

Monday I did 8.25 with Chris and surprisingly enough, I felt not too bad. I could feel the ache, but it didn't seem as debilitating as before. I tried to be careful with my form and stride so as not to aggravate anything, and while I'm sure it didn't help matters, at least it didn't leave me worse off.

Tuesday night was another party at the track, and it being the 1st of the month meant it was also time trial day. With my groin the way it was, I made the executive decision that going all-out wasn't going to help anyone or anything, so I told myself I'd dial it back a bit.

One mile in I cross in 5:17...a little faster than planned but still a tad slower than normal. Probably not slow enough though as I was still suffering aerobically about as bad as I normally do during these tortuous sessions. I dropped back moreso in the 2nd mile (5:26), finishing in a disappointing 10:43 considering how tired I was. 10:43 isn't me running at 100%, but it ended up being a little closer to 100% than it should have been, ifyouknowwhatimean. I think the 3 days off caught up to me a bit. Luckily though my groin held up. I could feel it straining during it, but luckily it never crossed that figurative line, causing me to stop short and limp home. That image to the right is me at some point during it, judging by my facial expression and sweat probably somewhere close to the end. Maybe the 1.5 mile mark or so.* While it wasn't the 90+ it was over the weekend, anything over 70 at the track feels hot since we've gotten no time at all from Mother Nature to acclimate ourselves. Just a few weeks ago a time trial got canceled because it was pouring rain and about 45 degrees.


I took last night off (not counting my invigorating bike ride to and from work) and will test the groin out again tonight. Probably 7-8 casual miles. There's the annual Firecracker 5K which I've run twice before (and written about twice, if you care to search for it), but I'm honestly not feeling up to it. Not for vanity's sake--I could deal with running a slower 5K--I just don't think it's worth the risk of aggravation. Plus last year I think the course was a tenth of a mile or so long, ruining my goal to finally crack 17:00. So eff that ish.

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Workout last night was supposed to be 12x400 again w/90 seconds rest, but with my pacing duty for this year's Seafair Half Marathon (6:52 pace) coming up this Sunday, I figured I should get a little work in getting that pace down in my head. So my amended workout became:

400
Mile @ 6:52 pace
400
(90 sec. rest)
400
Mile @ 6:52 pace
400
(90 sec. rest)
400
Mile @ 6:52 pace
400

The miles in between each 400 would also act as rest, so true "stop and suck wind on the side of the track" rest would only occur twice during the workout. The 400s I would try to run about the same speed as last week (1:10-1:13 range).

Sadly, I was not physically prepared to immediately switch from a 4:48 mile pace (in the form of a 1:12 400) to a 6:52 pace for the mile I was practicing, so my times ended up looking like:

1:12 400
5:54 1600
1:13 400
(90 sec. rest)
1:12 400
6:05 1600
1:10 400
(90 sec. rest)
1:10 400
6:19 1600
1:09 400

Those mile times are not slowing down because I'm getting fatigued. That first mile was almost a minute faster than I'll want to be leading people in 4 days, and each mile after that was my piss poor attempt to bring it to the intended 6:52 pace. The problem is, after a 400, dropping that much speed caused me to feel like I was shuffling along at a 12:00 pace. The workout probably would have went better if I just ran 3 consecutive 6:52 miles and THEN did 6x400 or something. Oh well.

Ahead of time apologies to anyone forced to run with me on Sunday.

As it was however, from a purely selfish standpoint, the workout was good. Got a good sweat going and those 400s were tough. Total mileage ended up being 7.75 instead of the typical 6.25 a 12x400 ends up being.


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