jayaresea.com - running long time

Reason #59012904 FloTrack Rules the Mainstream Media

~10 minute casual conversations with The Chosen One while strollin' across the Great Wall of China the day after his 10th place finish in the men's marathon.

I mean, it's not Bob Costas sitting in a posh studio inhaling Michael Phelps' jock, but it's not bad for a little upstart organization.

Another 26.1

Ran another iteration of 26.1 miles this past Saturday as my long "long run" of the training session. These past few marathons have always called for long "long runs" of 23 miles after a few weekends of 20 miles, but I figured I'd switch it up a bit and focus more on time spent on my feet this time around, and make sure I exceed the amount I'll be on my feet this coming October. It was run very easy (7:47 pace) and I finished at around 3:23. That being said, I felt like garbage at the end, with another life-altering side stitch creeping up in the final 1.5 miles.

That said, I equipped myself much better this time around. Last time I tried this (before the Northface 50k), I only had one freakin' gu with me and no fluid...and I ran a PR pace. I'd only drink when I could find a fountain somewhere. This time I had two packs of Clif Blocks and three Clif Shots as well as a bottle of mildly watered down Gatorade (red flavor!). By the 20 mile mark I'd finished the bottle, so I filled it up w/water and had the 2nd (and final) Clif shot (mango flavor...revolting).

Upon getting home and entering the distance into my log, I found out I barely eclipsed last week's mileage PR, bumping my record from 70.45 to 70.8 miles. Now I *really* get a little R&R time, with tonight's 16x400 being the only real workout of note. I was successful in getting back out there Sunday, if only to stretch the legs out a bit and aid recovery, doing an easy 6.25 in Discovery Park, and then did a little under 7 (also easy) w/Bender last night in Ballard. Aside from tonight's workout, the rest of the week up to the SJ&J Half on Labor Day is a smattering of 30 minute easy jogs. Estimated mileage all told will only be around 30-35. Then it's back to the grind for another 2-3 weeks, and then it's time for a real (and deserved, if I say so myself) taper.

Portland Marathon

I realized...I don't think I've mentioned what the hell I've been killing myself for these past couple months. I'm running the Portland Marathon. It's going down October 5th. I officially signed up the other day.

My goal time is whatever I end up running.

Cresting The Hill

After the marathon 400m session Tuesday night, I felt relatively ok on the cooldown job back to the car. Better than I typically do after the past month of 800s at least. But the next day I was tight and hurting. My left glute and left quadricep added a bit more misery to the usual pelvic soreness. I hobbled around at work, not exactly looking forward to the 75-90 minuter my schedule was calling for. Especially since Thursday would mark the return of the always brutal 4x1 mile. I wasn't sure my legs could handle consecutive nights like that after a 16x400m session where some random Swedish guy pushed me to my limits.

About 3/4 of a mile into the run that night, I said "Fuck it" and turned around. Wasn't worth it, it'd be better to feel stronger for the Thursday workout I figured. As I climbed back up the hill towards my apt, I started getting ill at the thought of a mere 12 minute run. So at the last second I veered right and figured I'd add a little roundabout to make it a solid 15 minuter. Instead of making the final left turn to my apt though, I found myself continuing straight towards Kinear Park. "Just do a loop at Kinnear," I asked of myself. "That will give us 25 minutes probably." I relented and did it.

One thing led to another and I finally stopped my watch at about 45 minutes. Not quite 75, but better than the 12 I almost did.

Feeling better the next day, I got in a respectable 4x1 mile workout at the Greenlake track. Here are each rep's time, with the tune that carried me through it (I opened up my running playlist and went with the first 4 songs that were over 5 minutes long...just hit play on each one, sit back, relax, and picture me running 16 laps around an oval track):

5:37

5:32

5:24

5:16

Kind of a big gap there, as I'm wont to do it seems, but I really wanted to take it conservatively in the first two in case my body just fell apart. Last one had uplifting 400m splits of:

80-80-80-76

And now my glutes are sore again...at least I don't feel any strain in the quadricep and tonight is a real night off (while sitting on ice). Which is good since tomorrow is a 23-25 mile trip through hell. If I can just make it over this hill, the following week is a mini-taper before the SJ&J Half Marathon on Sep 1st that my body desperately needs.

Track Entourage

16x400 was last night's responsibility, and despite being a little under a mile less distance than our previous weeks of 10x785m, I was a little intimidated by the "16" portion of the workout. Really? 16? Ugh.

In my mind, the only way to combat this is to a) run in a group and b) change leaders throughout the workout. This keeps things relatively fresh, rather than running 16 laps all by your lonesome. It can get dicey though if you're working in a group of guys/gals who aren't exact matches in terms of fitness. The "slow guy" has to lead a couple times, perhaps compromising the faster guys' workouts, or the "fast guy" leads a few and the slow guy falls way behind and/or kills himself trying to keep up.

A month ago I would have had to run this whole thing by myself. But with Dutch making leaps and bounds in his fitness over the past few weeks, and our successful attempt to convince the Swede to come on out for some speed work*, last night I had a group. And it was great.

*The Swede prepared us for his arrival with a couple weeks of "I'm not very good at speed, perhaps I should try your guys' track workouts." And then a few hours before the workout he dropped a "My heel is bothering me, but I'll probably make it out and just run on my toes for as long as I can." Annnnnnnnnd then he more or less dominated us. I kept waiting for him to die. For the constant repetition of speed to wear on him. It never did.

The only hiccup in the workout was when Andy led #7 and #8. He's not quite as fast as we are, and he can't really pace a speed workout very well, but we wanted to include him and figured we'd have to do so in the first half of the workout, or else he'd quickly fade and he'd be leading us to 84s or 85s in the 2nd half. 77s and 76s though were perfectly fine.

We led blocks of two reps apiece up until the final two, in which it was "every man for himself."

Final splits for me (leader)

75 (me)
74 (me)
73 (swede)
73 (swede)
73 (dutch)
73 (dutch)
77 (andy)
76 (andy)
70 (me)
72 (me)
71 (swede)
71 (swede)
73 (dutch)
73 (dutch)
68 (EMFH)
66 (EMFH)

(72.4 avg)

The Swede technically led the "Every Man For Himself" final two, blasting 65's to wrap it up. Like on the hills, he'd start way faster than us and then hang on. On the 2nd to last rep, I was probably 3 seconds behind him at the 200m mark but kept it at that. On the final one, I was reeling him in on the backside and then he dropped the hammer in the final 50m, leaving me no hope. My 66 though was the fastest I've ever gone in a 400 workout, not counting high school because I have no memory of my track splits back then. I probably didn't even wear a watch. But last night, finally, with a guy to chase, I chopped off two whole secondz. PRs like whoa.

Tiger Mountain

Four and a half years into my Seattle sojourn I finally made it out to Tiger Mtn despite it only being like a 25 minute drive from the city. Good times. Tackled it with The Swede and Dutch; did who knows how many miles in a little over 2 hours. My legs were fried and my groin wouldn't let me do anything of note on the unending downhills aside from grimace and watch my companions leave me in the dust, but it was good.

Final Tally

70.45 miles in 506 minutes (7:11 pace). Schedule called for 17 today, but my little route wound up being 17.4, giving me a bit of cushion I didn't know I would need.

Tired

10 more 785m jaunts in and around the Greenlake track. Legs were a little weathered from the weekend's 31 miles (13 of which at race pace), so the times at the track were a hair slower. Not as slow as I feared it would be though.

2:43
2:41
2:39
2:39
2:38
2:37
2:36
2:32
2:30
2:28

All equal or negative splits, groin/leg behaved as it does during all these workouts...little weak out the gate, gets warmed up in the middle, and then starts whining towards the end. No prob...for now.

Monday was nearly 9 miles at 7:20 pace, tonight was nearly 12 miles at 7:05 pace.

45 miles so far this week, outside shot at topping 70 by week's end.

I'm tired.

Cougar Mountain 13 miler results

Wrapped up the Cougar Mountain Series this weekend with the 13ish miler, the longest of the series, under gray and misty skies and a fair amount of rain. In other words, perfect running weather when you're in a forest under considerable tree cover (although terrible weather if you're doing, well, ANYTHING ELSE outdoors on an otherwise August morning). I finished 3rd overall in 1:44:23, behind that freak The Swede, who finished 2nd in 1:41:13, and some name I've seen around but never seen in person, Chris Charles, who smoked everyone with a 1:35:29.

Dutch returned to the racing circuit with his first race since Boston 2007 and his first trail/mountain race ever (I think) and did well despite still not being in prime shape and not knowing the course at all, finishing 9th in 1:52:16. I think if we ran the exact same race next weekend, he could have enough confidence/knowledge to run with the guys who finished #4-5, and then of course wipe them out in the kick, cuz that's how the Cobra Kai roll, cousin.

Myself, I was moderately pleased with the race, though I feel I crossed the line feeling a little too good. My legs were tired from the climbing/constant braking, but aerobically I was fresh as a daisy. I distinctly remember at certain junctions of the course realizing "uhh...I'm not breathing hard at all." I couldn't really take advantage of it though because 98% of the time, I was either slowly climbing as much as my tired little legs would carry me, tearing apart my groin on downhill braking sessions, or forming blisters on my feet from high speed 135 degree turns around trees and whatnot. For someone who still has more "speed" than "strength", there weren't a lot of opportunities to flaunt what I got. From about the halfway point on, I recall begging the course to give me any decent amount of distance on a flat straight trail--even as little as a quarter mile--just so that I could let it rip for a couple consecutive minutes. I felt that was the only way I was going to make ground on the Swede, if even then. I'd seen this guy go up and down hills a couple times over the past few weeks and I knew I wasn't going to gain ground there; I needed flat and straight...and I don't think I got much of it.

Which leads me to my next regret. Well, not really a regret because there wasn't much I could do about it at the time, but I think I could have hung with the Swede. The problems were 1) I had NO idea how fast he'd be able to go and 2) he went out way faster than I was comfortable going in the early part of the race. But I'm pretty confident (despite no evidence whatsoever) that he built up that 3 minute lead mostly in the first half of the race and from there on out we were pretty much even. If I could just grow a pair of balls, I could have let it all hang out in the first half and then die with him in the 2nd half. Instead, I ran ALL of miles 3-13.1 completely and utterly alone. No one in front of me, no one behind me. No voices, no footsteps, nothing. No mile markers, no way of knowing how fast I was going, nothing. But when I found out he only beat me by 3 minutes, and knowing that 1/5 of that lead came in the first half mile (when I last saw him), I think I woulda coulda shoulda gone out with him. It surely may have freaked out my system in those first few miles, but it would have been a good test. Oh well. All told that day it was about 15 miles in ~2 hours.

For my troubles, I won this. If I never reminded the Swede about the race, I would have won another free pair of shoes. D'oh!

Yesterday I, ~~perhaps~~ surely stupidly, ran 16.2 miles in 1:59. I pretty much spent the last 3 miles arguing with myself about whether we should or should not cut the run short at various forks in the road. The sadist in me won out, my groin being the big loser on the day. Walked in the door and immediately started icing with my new contraption. Made a watery mess and realized this is a product best used outside away from wood floors and cats that don't like ice cold water dripping on or near them.

Time Trial - Aug 2008

It was a little warm and a little smoggy, but I did what I planned on doing and broke 10:20 for the August 2 mile time trial with a 10:18 (5:08/5:10). Had some of the absolute worst cotton mouth I've ever had for the first three laps. I was lickin my lips something fierce during those 4 or so minutes, and felt like I probably looked like Kramer in the "Jimmy's gonna put the moves on Elaine" episode of Seinfeld. Like half my mouth was shot up with novocaine. I knew it would go away eventually, but not *that* eventually.

Afterward the gang threw down 6x200 (not timed, just hard) with 200m rest and called it a night. Done with this for another month, yay.

One problem I was having was the combination of my shoes and the dirt track. I consciously felt at times like I was kind of slipping during moments of the trial. My "speed" shoes only have like 200 miles on them (or so I think, although Flotrack *did* have a weird breakdown with their database awhile back and I kind of recall some of my shoes' stats going haywire), but they're admittedly kind of worn on the bottom and I definitely noticed it last night. I don't know what that's worth if I did a 2 mile on an all-weather track with fresh shoes, but maybe it'd be enough to PR (sub 10:13, I think). Over the past 4-5 weeks, we've been doing mostly off-road 800s, so my time actually ON that track has been somewhat limited. Doing 8 consecutive fast laps on it though made me well aware I might need new shoes. Which sucks. I was hoping to get at least 350-400 miles out of them.

All's well though. I did what I wanted to do, despite my groin discomfort, and don't seem to be any worse off than I typically am after hard track workouts. I'm hoping I can ride this wave through the Portland Marathon and then finally give the legs some time to breathe. If I can just balance on this edge for another two months (on top of the 4-6 weeks I've already been teetering on this edge), they'll earn a nice little reprieve from me and my unending demands. At least that's what I promised them the other day. I typically go back on my word though, so we'll see how I'm feeling in mid October, but for now they have a finish line in sight.

Again, time trial day is the worst day of the month.

Saturday is the 13(ish) miler on Cougar Mountain. The Swede will likely be there, as well as a slew of other guys I'm sure can kick my ass (as well as Dutch and Patrick), so I'm preparing myself for a tough little workout. Let's hope Mr. Groin can hold out through the finish line and I can escape the weekend relatively unscathed.

66 miles

Despite taking two (2) days off last week, I still ended up with 66 miles all told, which may or may not be a record. I want to say the old one was 65, back before Boston (a lot of good that did), but maybe I've topped it some other time. Either way, it was a lot, and had I known I would have been that high, I would have scraped together an easy 5 miler on Monday or Friday to top 70 for the first time. Ah well.

The crux of the miles came from 14 on Sunday, 16 on a double-day Tuesday, and 20 yesterday.

The double day was the first in awhile. I did a very easy yet moderately painful 4 miles in the morning in Portland, and then before dinner, around 6pm, I took off for a track I had earlier gmapped and did my 10x800 workout like a good soldier.

2:45
2:42
2:42
2:41
2:40
2:39
2:38
2:37
2:37
2:32 (2:39 avg)

That's five miles right there, and the to-from the track added another 7, giving me 12 for the night and 16 for the entire day. It rained that night, mostly during the 2nd half of my track workout. Perfect weather. Warm enough to get a good sweat going, but the rain kept things cool and refreshing.

Thursday it was Dutch, Patrick and myself battling the Greenlake summer hill, and yes, as we had hoped, there was our new Swedish friend (sure enough seen here at last year's Cougar 13 miler where he really did get 2nd...and hey, while we're here, here's Patrick at the same race throwing up "I love you" gang signs and wearing a backpack) doing his own modified workout on the hill while assuring us he'd most likely be at this Saturday's 13 miler on Cougar Mtn. As we did our Easy-Medium-Hard workout (x3), we watched in amazement as the Swede also did 9 charges, but his were all hard, and then he'd go hard on the way down too. This was where we were most impressed. He was literally sprinting downhill, showing off what must be some of the toughest knees this side of the city. I couldn't even fathom going downhill as fast as he was if I was 100%, let alone with my tender groin the way it is right now. After a set of 3, he'd disappear to the other side of the hill where he was doing some mysterious "strength building exercises", after which he'd pop back out and hammer another 3 charges for us to watch in awe and shake our heads in disbelief.

As for ourselves, it was another good workout. Truth be told, until Thursday night I'd never seen Dutch in a hill workout. We've run Cougar Mtn a few times, but those are simply long slow hill climbs. Thursday was the first time seeing him do some hill CHARGES, and honestly, he kicked my ass. Not quite as bad as the Swede did the week before, but pretty well considering his little bird legs.

Charges were about 20 meters longer than last week and there was a steady, refreshing rain throughout.

(E-M-H)
1:45-1:31-1:16
1:51-1:26-1:14
1:44-1:26-1:13

Once again, negative splitting on that last charge was a character building experience. I think I can speak for Patrick and Dutch (both of whom will be at this Saturday's race) when I say I look forward to seeing how the Swede does on Cougar Mtn.

Yesterday morning I woke up and checked the club website to see what I was supposed to do for my long run and was dismayed to see "20" on the schedule. I had kinda lost contact with the schedule, what with my weekend races and Cougar Mtn runs distracting me the past couple weeks, and totally didn't think it was time for the 20s yet. However, it IS only ~2 months until Portland, I suppose it's now or never.

Headed out with Patrick and some other people and did a nice slow 20.2 miles in 2:45 (8:10 pace). I would say that I had to "force" myself to roll at such a pedestrian pace, but reality is my groinage didn't want me doing something of that quantity any faster anyway, unless briefly. There were moments of "aww geez am I going to hurt like this for the whole 20?" and subsequent moments of "ok, things are feeling a little better now, let's hope it stays this way" (which of course it wouldn't). Oddly enough, I felt the best when I'd pick up the pace a bit, particularly on uphills. In the final 2 miles, I have no idea how fast I was going--surely sub-7:00, but how sub I don't know--and was able to bring it home strong, feeling pretty fresh, groin notwithstanding.

After a couple hours of puttering around on tender legs Saturday morning, I actually have felt pretty good since, leading up to and going through this morning's easy 6 miles. I intend to truly take it relatively easy this week, fearing if I don't, Saturday's 13 mile race will probably lead to P-A-I-N in perhaps the injury sense, and I really don't need that.

Seafair results & more hills

Though you wouldn't know it from checking out the results page, I had a fairly successful 8K last night, running the Torchlight Run and once again setting an 8K PR (which kinda loses its impressiveness when you realize I only run one 8K per year). Last year I ran a 28:10, this year I crossed in 27:30, a 5:32 mile pace. Don't bother with the official results though...for some reason I'm not there. That marks the second time this year a timing chip mat has failed to read me. "Way to breathe, no-breath," I hear Jimbo saying behind me.

Every year the race surprises me in its difficulty. I keep forgetting about its hilly-ness. The opening miles are on the hellish highway 99 and here I was finding myself picking people off on uphills and surprisingly not being dusted on the downhills. Before the turnaround point I saw Patrick on his dorky little bike going in the opposite direction. He honked his bike's equally dorky little honk and yelled something unintelligible through his full face helmet. This picked up my spirits a bit, but as is the case with most races, the spirits quickly came and went and I entered the 2nd half of the race.

Luckily, the 2nd half IS mostly in the safely shaded downtown streets and you're constantly being goaded on by the multi-thousand strong crowd who are patiently waiting for this race to end and the Seafair Parade to begin. Unfortunately, this being downtown, the rolling hills are ever present and it was on these downhill junctions that my groin started whining. Before too much damage could be done though I saw the finish and brought it home. And...that about sums it up. Hung out with Patrick for a few and then, upon starting my cooldown, could barely move. Eventually the blood started flowing again and I got about 3 more really sweaty miles in. Two for the warmup = about 10 really sweaty miles for the night. Treated myself to an orange Amp later that night and two episodes from the Simpsons legendary 7th season (hence my quote above).

----

12 hours later I was on Cougar Mtn with Dutch and damnit, we were gonna do the whole Cougar Mtn loop this time, which amounts to about 14 miles, if I've been informed correctly. While scenic and soft and kinda rainy and misty...much of this run sucked, primarily because of the race that preceded it. After a couple painful warmup miles, I felt OK for...maybe 5 miles, at which point the fatigue from last night hit me and I started suffering again. Downhills were my enemy, putting more stress on you know who, and uphills...when are they ever fun? We finished in 2:12, though I'd like to time it again sometime when I'm a bit more fresh. We enjoyed moments of self-depreciation while commenting that Uli Steidl runs this loop in about 1:40 (or so we've read or heard or whatever).

(Dutch and Johnny are still about 3 miles from finishing up, and they're both feeling withered.)

Dutch: What's the time at, Johnny?
Johhny: 1:49...Uli finished 9 minutes ago.
Dutch: Great.
Johnny: Cobra Kai!
Dutch: Shutup.

----

All that being said, today I do feel like a stronger runner than a year ago (and definitely two years ago). Can't really pinpoint why, but I'd guess it's the hilly trails I've been doing coupled with the occasional "long hard run." Both of these types of runs have been rumored to actually slow your "speed" down for shorter races while instead increasing strength for longer distances, but as my 8K last night attests, I'm no slower than a year ago. I'm actually faster (if you consider an 8K a "shorter" race)...and I *have* to be stronger after all this goddamn hill training I've been doing, be it during a long run on Cougar Mtn or hill charges with Swedish XC skiiers. Before the race, the fact that I have been training in this slightly different way had me warning myself to not be surprised if I couldn't match last year's time. But I did, so eat it!

785s, Hills, and Swedes

This week I tried my hardest to stay off the road during my runs, and did a pretty good job (if I say so myself...which I suppose I just did) as I head into this weekend's Torchlight Run, an 8K road race I've done twice before. The groin thing comes and goes...I wouldn't say it's on its way out, but at least it's not getting worse. The worst runs of the week for that private area of mine are the long runs on Saturday mornings and the Tuesday track workout. After both of those workouts I find myself hobbling along, perhaps to my car...or the donut shop, or the bathroom. A few hours later I'll feel better, but that initial post-workout time reminds me to be careful...and that donuts are good.

Tuesday's was especially rough. It was yet another iteration of 10x785 (w/90 secs rest), and the goal this time out was to tighten the kinda ridiculous range I had the week before (2:46 down to 2:24, though admittedly it was sort of planned). I probably wouldn't go as fast at the end, but I would go faster at the start and my avg *should* end up either equal or faster than the prior week. And this happened.

2:40
2:39
2:35
2:38
2:35
2:35
2:34
2:32
2:30
2:28 (2:35 avg)

Only a 12 sec different this time, so huzzah. As per usual, my groin started pleading with me around the 7th or 8th rep, but it held on through the end. Dutch was there and did the full load this time, hitting 10 and getting down to 2:38 on the final one. He's definitely getting back in shape.

After standing around for a few minutes upon completion, thankful that Todd's buddies from last week didn't decide to make a reappearance, I started the slow mile-ish jog back to the car and I could barely move my legs. It was like my groin area fell asleep or something. After a minute or two it loosened up enough, but man that first minute sucked.

Wednesday I got about 75 minutes in at Discovery Park, all on trails, some of which was a climb. Slow, but good for strength and easy on the groin. Again, the first 15-20 minutes was all warmup on the groin, at which point it started to loosen up and the pain faded away.

Last night I headed out to Greenlake again after work to do some hills with Patrick's preferred (off road) slope and had a grand time. I've always been doing my hill charges on concrete. There's not a lot of pounding on hill charges no matter where you are...at least on the uphill (downhill on concrete is another story altogether), so concrete hills are good if you want to see some fast splits. I noticed this right away on my first charge last night on the graveley trail. Obviously a lot more give on the ground, I couldn't push off as well and I could feel myself slipping on certain steps, which made for a more punishing workout, even though the hill itself was shorter than the quarter mile-ish hills I've been doing.

Same easy-med-hard setup:

1:26
1:15
1:07
--
1:22
1:10
1:05
--
1:22
1:10
1:04

After the 3rd charge (last of the first set), a guy asked if he could jump in with whatever Patrick and I were doing. Patrick earlier had said he'd seen the guy the Thursday before. He was doing some cross country ski training on the same hill we were using, but said his hips were bothering him so he figured he'd get a workout in with us instead. We told him what we were doing ("easy, med, then hard, to the crest of this hill right here") and he took off with me. On the first two (easy, med) he hung right next to me and seemed to be climbing almost effortlessly. On the way down before the hard one, I told him to feel free to lead the charge if he could.

"No man, this is your workout."
"Uhh, right, but don't hold back on my behalf, you gotta get a workout in yourself."
"We'll see."

He then proceeds to beat me up the hill pretty easily.

I learned he was from Sweden and he was a pretty freakin' good XC skier. He's been here about a year and a half at UW for school. He admitted to not running very often, but it was clear that whatever training he was doing for XC skiing had given him the ability to bound up hills like a mountain goat.

We stuck together on the 3rd set's easy and med reps, and then he absolutely destroyed me on the last one as I sputtered my way up as fast I could, just trying to match my time from the previous hard one. Had he not been there, there's NO WAY I would have done it. Pride was the only thing that kept me climbing.

The best part was finding out that he in fact had run the 13 mile Cougar Mtn race from LAST year...the one I plan to run on Aug 9th (final one of the 4 race series). And to top it off...he got 2nd! On what he said was nothing more than XC skiing training since he'd only run a few actual training runs before the race. He was able to hang with the leader for about half the race, then died due to lack of miles in the shoes. Relieved that it was a legit dude schooling me on these hills, I, perhaps stupidly, urged him to run the upcoming 13 miler in a couple weeks, possibly knocking me down the ladder one more slot. He seemed up for it. We'll see.

By far the hardest hill charge workout I've put myself through. Just goes to show what a rabbit can do for you.

Speed & Strength

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.

Back In The News

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.

Red Socks

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.