Monday, March 14, 2011 – AM: Me duerme bien anoche, excepto que tenía algunas pesadillas muy asustadizas. Me desperté a las 8:00 y después de ponerme la ropa, me salí de mi carrera por la mañana. Hacía poco frio (~35F), pero no estaba tan mal. Estaba poco cansado y rígido, pero después de 5 o 10 minutos, me sentía mucho mejor. Yo corrí al campo de turf (césped) y corrí allí de 11 vueltas. La buena noticia estaba que mi pie derecho no me dolía nada. Creo que la cinta lo ayudó mucho.
Entonces, después de 30 minutos, yo corrí al Gantcher para hacer el lift (levantamiento de pesas). Despues de eso, yo volví a Lewis para estirar antes de desayunar.
AM2: En Gantcher, yo hice el levantamiento de la fase IV. Usé pesas pocos ligeros otra vez. Todo sentía bien. Mi equilibrio está mejorando – las lanzas sentían más fácil. El levantamiento era: 3 x [12,10,8x seated row @40lb, 10x incline DB press @ 10lb freeweights, 10x lateral raise @ 5lb freeweights, 12,10,8x horizontal pull ups, 8,6,6x hamstring curls @ 80lb, 30x bicycle crunch, 12,10,8x dynamic lunge, 8x leg press @90lb, 10x Shoulder press @10lb free weight, 30x crunches].
PM: Después de almorzar, yo regresé a mi habitación para llamar a Zinnia. Ha pasado mucho tiempo que desde que yo hablé con ella. Estaba muy bien; ella se sentía bien. Entonces, charlábamos por como 20 minutos y entonces necesité irme a EMID. También, necesité cambiar mi ropa para correr. Entonces, me salí un poco tarde y necesité correr a clase.
Tras EMID, yo me fui al Gantcher para la práctica. Me puse mucha ropa – un montón de capas – porque quiero que acostumbrarme a correr en el calor. Me puse medias debajo de mis pantalones de correr, una camisa, el suéter del equipo, 2 gorros, mitones, y unos rompe vientos aislantes.
Hablaba con Murner y el me dijo que también quería correr como 10 millas. Fuimos juntos y nos dirigimos al Harvard y el Charles. Pasamos por Harvard y giramos a la derecha cuando lleguemos al rio. Hacía muy raro tiempo – hacía sol y no tan frio, pero de cuando en cuando, hacía un poquito de nieve. ¡Qué raro!
Entonces volvimos por la ruta normal por Porter y añadimos una milla extra alrededor de los campos. Me sentía bien y el ritmo siempre estaba muy cómodo. Cuando regresamos, yo come un cliff bar y tomé un gatorade. Estaba muy sudado porque llevaba mucha ropa – que fea.
Yo estiré y rodé y, más tarde, fui al Dewick con Murner para cenar.
El tiempo total fue de 1:14:21 para 10 millas+++ (10.25M en 69 minutos – ~6:45 promedio).
Martes, Marzo 15, 2011 – Yo dormí muy bien anoche. Me acueste a las 10pm y desperté a las 8am naturalmente. Me sentía muy bien. Antes de desayunar, yo hice abdominales – 100s, 50s, 20x SD, 20x superman, 30x leg lift.
PM: Después de clase y almuerza, yo relajaba por poco tiempo. Practicaba mi español por leer el Principito. Yo leí en voz alta para practicar hablar y también empecé recordar las palabras que no sabía en una gran lista. Ya me siento mejor sobre la comprensión y el hablo.
Pues, me puse la ropa y fui de Lewis a las 2:45pm. Hacía muy buen día – hacía sol y no estaba tan fría, como 50F. Primero, corrí a la pista para dejar mis zapatos con clavos y el gatorade. Después de eso, fui al Gantcher para reunirse con el resto del equipo. Salimos juntos a las 3:10pm, mas o menos.
Yo corrí al campo alumni porque quería correr sobre la hierba. Yo estaba poco caliente y entonces regresé al Gantcher para conseguir otra camiseta. Finalmente, corrí a Baronian y terminé el calentamiento alrededor de la hierba con Sam Haney.
Después, yo cambie mis zapatos (Peer flats) y hice ejercicios de los pies (medio reps). Finalmente, hice 3 strides y un de 200m @ ritmo objetivo (37.h). Por fin, estaba listo.
El entrenamiento de hoy era 6x1600m @ ritmo 10k con 90 segundos de descansar. Para mí, yo quería correr 75.x cada vuelta (5:00-5:04 en total). No pensaba que iba a ser tan difícil, porque el descanso era más largo que yo esperé.
Entonces, fuimos juntos – yo, Nick, y Matt. Nick nos llevó en la primera rep. Hacía poco viento, pero no estaba tan malo como la semana pasada. Todavía, fue notable a lo largo de la parte trasera. Nick nos tomó con un ritmo muy consistente. Corrimos 5:01.0. Estaba poco difícil, pero no tan malo. Durante el secundo, nos llevó Matt. Tambien, estábamos muy consistente – corrí 5:00.1. Estas primeras reps era un pocita más rápida que yo quería correr. Entonces, cuando a mi me toqué para llevar, estábamos un poco más despacio.
Los tres primeros estaban poco rapidos, y entonces el cuarto era poco difícil. Yo necesitaba trabajar un pocito más que quería para correr 75.x. Durante la última vuelta del cuarto, yo perdí contacto con ellos y corría solo. Era muy más difícil con el viento y sin que nadie marcar el ritmo.
El quinto y el sexto eran poco más difíciles también porque estaba solo la mayor parte del tiempo. Matt y Nick dejaron después de cinco vueltas. Entonces, ellos corrían poco rápido (matt 4:52) en el quinto. Para el sexto, estaba solo hasta la última vuelta cuando Nick se unió a mí. Este estaba muy útil y yo cerré bien en 73.1.
Finalmente, yo cambie mis zapatos otra vez (a mis Tumbes clavos) y corrí 2x200m. Pasaba como 3 o 4 minutos para cambiar los zapatos antes de empezar los 200s. Corrí el primero con Erik en 29.6. Tomé 2:00 para correr muy lento, y corrí el último en 29.1. Este es bien rápido para mí.
Cambie mi zapatos otra vez y volví al campo de alumni para hacer el cool down. Estaba poco cansando y después de una vuelta, me dirigía adentro. Corrí unas vueltas adentro de Gantcher y entonces estiré y rodé. Cuando estaba finito, corrí a Dewick para una cena rápida.
En general, creo que fue buen entrenamiento. Era poco más difícil de que yo esperaba, pero era una de las primeras entrenamientos afueras que yo hice. Era muy bonito para correr con Nick y Matt otra vez. Pasó mucho tiempo desde que corremos juntos.
Splits:
6x1600m, 90 sec lento entre cada uno
5:01.0 (75.5, 74.5, 74.7, 76.3)
5:00.1 (75.4, 74.9, 75.1, 74.7)
5:02.8 (75.8, 75.3, 76.3, 75.3)
5:03.4 (76.4, 75.5, 75.4, 76.1)
5:03.8 (74.7, 77.3, 76.6, 75.1)
5:02.6 (75.8, 76.6, 77.0, 73.1)
2x200m: 29.6, (2:00 correr muy lento) 29.1
Wednesday, March 16, 2011 - AM: I slept pretty soundly and woke up to my alarm at 7:30am. I contemplated sleeping in and skipping class and hit the snooze button for a while, but eventually dragged my ass out of bed and got moving. I really layered up this morning. I wore my warmest thermal tights with sweatpants over them. On top, I wore an under armor spandex top, a cotton long sleeve, my insulated windbreaker and a cotton sweatshirt. I also had on my warmest mittens, neck warmer, and two hats.
I jogged down to Baronian and did my run on the grass there. I had hoped to do it on the big field behind the track, but I couldn’t figure out how to get there. So, I just ran around the infield. Needless to say, I was pretty hot. I practiced speaking in Spanish aloud while running and probably looked like a mumbling crazy person to an external viewer. Anyways, I switched directions at the halfway and then headed back to Lewis. The total run was 32:25 for 4M+, mostly on grass.
PM: I headed to Gantcher after EMID and did about a mile before practice. I met up with Dan who was planning to run about 12M. I had planned to do 10-12M, and so I figured I’d at least start with him and then possibly cut short if I wanted to head back early. Dan had some specific route in mind which he claimed would be about 12M or maybe even short. I figured if it was more like 11M, that’d be perfect for me, anyways, so I foolishly agreed and we trundled off towards the river.
I had gone pretty far overboard in terms of over-dressing again. I was wearing my thermal tights under a pair of insulated wind pants. On top, I had an under-armor top, a cotton long sleeve, my TUXC pull-over, and an insulated wind breaker. All this with my warm mittens, neck warmer, and two hats. The temperature was probably in the mid 40s, close to 50F once it started to clear a bit. I was really hot really quickly.
We ran the usual route through Davis to Harvard and the river. We crossed and ran as we usually would along the river path. After passing the BU bridge, we crossed over storrow drive and headed into Boston. We reached this point in about 32min for a bit over 5M.
Once on the other side of Storrow drive, we ran up a smaller side street and then cut over to whatever street is that big divided one that runs parallel to storrow drive towards the Common. We ran through the middle of the divided street which had a bunch of grass to run on, so that was pretty nice. I was already feeling pretty pooped at this point, though, and I think I had begun to realize that it was going to be significantly longer than I had hoped. I was seriously overheating and sweating a lot, which was a serious double-whammy. First off, my body wasn’t used to having to work so hard in such warm conditions. To make matters worse, All of my sweat had totally soaked all of my layers by this point, and I was probably wearing upwards of 10 lbs worth of clothing.
Anyways, I was feeling pretty pooped by the time we got to the Common and it was clear that Dan was feeling a lot better. I was struggling pretty hard to keep up with him at that point. I don’t think I was actually all that tired from yesterday, or anything, since I had felt pretty good at the beginning. I think it mostly had to do with overheating and the fact that it felt like I was running in chain male.
Once we got around the common and back out to the river, I realized that we were going to be way over the 10-12 that I had initially planned. So, I really cut back the gas and took it really easy for a while. Judging by the overall pacing, we must have been running pretty quickly through Boston and I would guess that we slowed down to around 7:00 pace on the river. We jogged easily together until we hit the mass ave bridge and then followed mass ave all the way back to Harvard. I had told Murner that he was welcome to go off because I knew he had a lot more energy than I did, and I was glad that he did.
The last 2M+ I ran really slowly, probably close to 8:00 pace, since I knew it was going to be close to 15M. I basically tried to treat it like a cool down. This ended up working out all right and I got back in one piece.
All of my clothes were soaking wet, so I grabbed a big plastic garbage bag and just threw everything in there. Lifting this bag up, I could tell it probably weighed 15lbs or so, maybe even more. Jesus. This was the one day that I forgot to bring a Gatorade to practice, so I drank a lot of water before heading to Dewick (for Beach Night!). I spent most of the rest of the day re-hydrating and refueling. I don’t think I drank enough because I would wake up in the night with a really nasty headache. Ow!
I also had my Spanish Language interview with Strive a few hours after that run. I tried to get as much sugar in me as I could to give me some energy and make my brain wake up, but I was still feeling a bit foggy. So, I ate a couple of choc. Espresso beans and that seemed to help. (The interview went really well, by the way! She said she heard “a sense of comfort and relaxation with the language” and said she would give her recommendation for me to the Strive people. So, now it’s just the waiting game. I’ve made it pretty far at this point, but they do only accept one person for this position, so it’s a small-number-statistics problem. It’s pretty unpredictable. )
Anyways, the total run was 15M+ in 1:45:35 (14.5M with Dan in 1:39:18, 6:51 avg).
Thursday, March 17, 2011 – AM: I slept really badly last night. I was totally exhausted but just could not fall asleep. I had two chocolate espresso beans to give me a bit of perk before my Spanish interview at 8:30pm and I think that that must have been what did it. Either way, I woke up around 8:30am and surprisingly didn’t feel too terrible. I got dressed and jogged over to Gantcher.
Once there, I did the Phase III Lift in the varsity side of the gym. The lift was 3 sets of [dips (30-35), 10x seated row @40lb, 10x push up, 7x chin up, 8x RDL each foot, 20x side crunches, 15x shooters, 15x suitcases, 10x lunge walk]. I did half of the reps on the lunges and cut out the leg press/quad extension to let my thighs rest a bit. Everything felt fine though.
AM2: After the lift, I did a quick easy 15 min cool down on the stationary bike. I was pretty well layered and so I was pretty hot for this. Felt good though. Kept it short after yesterday, just wanted to shake out the legs. Afterwards, jogged back to Lewis.
PM: Today was an amazingly beautiful day! It was close to 60F all day and not a cloud in the sky. I had my first real ME lab this afternoon, which ended up taking a long time, so I wasn’t heading to Gantcher until like 4:00pm. I got there and was happy to find that Brosh had also just gotten in from class and hadn’t run yet. After a bit of discussion and talking to some of the guys who had just run, we decided to head towards the fells for the first time this year.
I wore a lot of layers again in hoping to get some last minute adjustment to overheating. It was a little ridiculous, especially while running with Brosh in just shorts and no shirt, but oh well. We had a really nice run and it was great to get back in the Fells. It was really beautiful there; there’s even still a bit of ice on the water. Very cool.
Anyways, we ran super slow and easy, which was just what I wanted. A good friendly conversational run. Afterwards, we tacked on some extra on alumni fields and then headed inside.
I did full barefoot drills on the blue mats and then headed to Dewick for my last Dewick dinner before Spring Break!
The total run was ~76min for 10M+.
Friday, March 18, 2011 – AM: I was not a happy camper when my alarm went off at 5:40 this morning. I consider myself a morning person, but this was a little too much morning, even for me. I was hoping to get a normal morning shakeout run in before we spent most of the day sitting in airports and on airplanes on the way to Hilton Head.
It was pitch black outside still and I thought it would be really cold, so I was considering just running on my parents’ old beat-up treadmill. But, my mom told me that it was already like 50F outside, so I decided to just layer up and head out. I didn’t overdress too much, mostly because I was rushed. I wore sweatpants, an underarmor top, and a sweat shirt, along with two hats and mittens. I took a flash light since my headlamp was packed somewhere. I headed out right around 6am, as planned.
It was very quiet and dark in the neighborhood at 6:00 on Friday morning. Most houses weren’t showing signs of life yet; I only saw one car. I ran the long way out to 62 and then turned around. I didn’t feel like running along the busy street without better reflective gear. I retraced my steps and then added on a bit on the border road loop. This brought be back just in time, a bit after 6:30am.
From there, I snagged an orange and then took a very fast shower before getting dressed and doing my last minute packing. I packed up some snacks and then hauled stuff downstairs and loaded up the car to get to the airport.
So far, travel has been pretty calm. No traffic to speak of on the way in and the airport wasn’t too crowded. I got a yogurt parfait for breakfast and now I’m probably going to take a nap. We connect in Charlotte, NC and then fly to Hilton Head. I think we should be there by mid afternoon. I’ll probably do my second run around 6pm to see what that’s like for the race tomorrow (gun at 6:15pm).
Anyways, the total run for this morning was ~30min for ~4M. I didn’t have a watch on it.
PM: We got here without too much trouble, checked into our place and were here by about 3:00pm. We took a quick trip to the grocery store to get some basic food to have in the condo and also stopped by a triathlon-specialty store, which had been recommended to me by a guy on the plane. The guys there were very friendly and had lots of good advice about where to run and specifically how to get to use the local track.
There was only one minor crisis during the afternoon. Within only a few hours of being on vacation, I was hit by a car. Yes, that was a little bit of an exaggeration… While we were in the parking lot of the grocery store, Mr. C shut his car door and the far edge of the door clipped me right on my hip-bone. It hurt really badly at that instant and I was buckled over for a minute or so. I got a big, nasty welt and would feel it walking around for the rest of the day.
After we got back, I took a bit of time to relax and then did core – 100s, 50s, 30x side dip, 30x super man, 50x leg lift, before heading out to run.
We left the house around 6pm and it was still very bright out and about 75F. The VC came with me on their bikes and we did a nice easy out/back from the house. The paths around here are pretty nice for running. They’re all paved but there is usually grass or dirt to run in next to the pavement. It’s also pretty shady so the heat didn’t feel too bad.
Anyways, we did 40 minutes out and back. It was a bit slow at first, but I actually felt really good by the end. I jogged over to the golf course afterwards to see if I could get some barefoot drills or strides in, but it was pretty packed. I did a couple of easy strides on the side in the grass and then jogged back to the house.
The total run was 42:07 for 6M.
Saturday, March 19, 2011 – AM: I slept pretty well last night but woke up around 6:15am for some reason and had trouble falling back asleep. My hip was bugging me a lot when I walked to the bathroom, so that may have had something to do with it. I stayed in bed and got a bit more sleep until I got up around 7:20am to watch what I thought would be the webcast of the NYC half marathon. Stupidly, I had mis-read the website and it turns out that the half is tomorrow (Sunday). Oops!
I was already up and out of bed at that point, though, so I decided to head out and do what I had planned as a little shake out on the golf course – really just an elaborate warm-up. I jogged out the back door to the golf course, which wasn’t opened yet, so there was no one playing. I took off my shoes and socks and jogged around for a couple of minutes before doing full barefoot foot drills. It felt great to run through the beautifully manicured fairway grass in bare feet. After doing drills, I jogged up and down this one hole a couple of times, finishing with one longer surge, not even up to stride speed. It all felt good.
The hip didn’t bug me too much. I felt it on pretty much every step, but it didn’t seem to be altering my stride, so I wasn’t too worried. The only thing that seemed tight or sore, surprisingly was my hamstrings, which I felt while doing Frankensteins. Just a bit tighter than usual. Once I jogged back to the condo, I did some dynamic stretching to try to loosen it up and then some rolling with the stick. Finally, I did some static stretching and it felt a good bit better.
I didn’t time the run or anything; it was probably only about a mile in total.
PM: I had a pretty low-key day today. After my morning shakeout, I had a very large breakfast and then spent the rest of the morning just relaxing, working on some random projects that I’ve been wanting to start for a while and resting. My hamstrings felt pretty tight the whole time, so I spent a good bit of time trying to stretch and roll them out. I couldn’t get them too well with the stick, but I found that my nalgene made a good substitute for the roller.
Anyways, I had a big lunch with my parents around noon – pasta, salad, fruit, some cookies. After this, I pretty much switched to all liquid for the rest of the afternoon. The gun was at 6:15pm and I didn’t want to have much solid food in me at that point because of the heat. So, I was just slowly sipping Gatorade and water for most of the afternoon. This seemed to work well. I did spend a ton of time peeing, though, haha.
We left the condo around 4:00pm to make the hour or so drive to Beaufort for the race. The thermometer in the car read 86F when we left and was down to about 79F by the time we got to Beaufort around 5pm. It was still quite sunny though at 5pm, though, so it felt pretty hot.
We parked in a big field and then walked into the main drag to pick up my number and get situated. The race center was a thriving bee’s nest of activity. One little street was crowded with vendors selling food, face paint, shirts, and more. I picked up my number and we parked ourselves on a little picnic bench to take stock of the timing and use the port-a-potty. The gun was at 6:15pm, so I figured I would start my warm-up around 5:30-35. This ended up being about right – maybe even a bit early.
I had brought a big zip-lock baggie full of ice and before I left for my warm-up, I put 3 or 4 ice cubes under my hat to melt onto my head to try and stay cool. It worked okay while standing around, but once I started running, the ice cubes had a hard time staying in my hat. I left right as the winners of the 5km race were coming through in a blazing 19:4x. I ran around the course, darting in and out of the 5k walk/joggers, and trying to get a feel for the course. A good portion was relatively shaded, which was a blessing, but there were also a lot of turns, several of which were pretty sharp 180 degree hairpins. There was also a pretty exposed section right down on the water where the wind was pretty strong and in your face. I figured this would be a place to tuck in and work. The nice thing was that the course was very flat, with only a few little bumps here and there.
Anyways, I ran for 25minutes and then came back and peed again before taking some water and trying to cool myself down some more. I soaked my hair and kept some ice cubes under my arm-pits for a few minutes before we moved shop from our picnic table to the spot where my parents could watch the race over near the start. Once there, I changed into my singlet and Peer flats (no socks) and started to do some drills on the grass. I realized about half-way through that I was going to be a bit ahead of schedule, so I took my time and jogged over to a couple of the faster looking guys.
I introduced myself and asked what they were hoping to run. One guy said “I’d be happy to break 28 minutes.” Another told me that he was hoping to run under 27, or around 5:20 pace. I told them that I was hoping to run around 5:20 pace as well (mostly because I didn’t want to seem like a cocky bastard), but it was starting to sound like this would be a solo effort – which, by the way, was really surprising, given that there was $250 for first place on the line…
I did a few strides starting around 10 minutes before the gun. People were lining up super early, but I pretty much ignored all their calls to the start since they said it would start at 6:15. Finally, they had someone sing the national anthem and I took one last pee before striding back to the line. The temperature was ~75F.
I got a good spot on the right side of the front of the line. From there, I would run a diagonal to the first sharp left-hand turn about 200m into the race. We all stood and waited for the command and then finally, an air horn sounded the start of the race.
I had told myself that this wasn’t cross country and there wasn’t really anyone to run against, so there was no point in sprinting the first 200-400m. Still, I found myself a little over-excited and running away from the field within the first straightaway. From there, I would never see anyone for the rest of the race. Luckily, there was a lead car or else I would have had a hard time following the winding course.
For most of the first mile, I heard foot-steps somewhat close behind me. I thought that I might actually have some company at some point, but it was clearly just people running above their ability levels (after the race, most of the faster guys I talked to said they ran much slower than they had hoped, probably do to me rabbiting them out a good bit faster than they had hoped through the first mile or so of the race.
I went into this race without any clear expectations. I wanted it to be a good, hard effort, but time-wise, I didn’t have too much in mind. It seemed like a lot of things were conspiring against the race going well – the heat, the wind, all the sharp turns on the course, the extra long run on Wednesday, the pain in my hip from the car-door incident. I think that I figured if everything went really well, I might be able to pull out a PR (<25:58). Mostly, I just wanted to run consistently, not blow up, and hopefully negative or at least evenly split.
As the 1M marker came into view, the clock next to it read 4:4x. I had a little bit of a panic attack, but it was farther away than I realized and so I passed the mile in 5:05. At that point, there was a turn and I could see that I already had a pretty big gap on the rest of the field. A pack of 5 or 6 guys was behind me by a solid margin. By then, I realized I would have no one to push me and it would just be me against the clock.
The course headed down towards the water and then a hairpin turn brought us back up towards the race nucleus. We passed by the first water stop and I grabbed a cup of water and tossed it on my head. My long hair actually worked pretty well as a cooling sponge. I had soaked it before the race and so between that and the re-soaking at each water stop, it actually acted as a nice coolant.
I passed the 2M mark in 10:08, so 5:03 for the second mile. I honestly expected it to be more like 5:10. The effort felt similar to the first mile, but I figured with the fast start, that must have been good for a few seconds fast. I then followed my friends in the pickup truck back up towards the race nucleus and then another hairpin turn along a divided street to run back down to the water. I could see that the rest of the field was well behind me here, as they were right on the other side of the median. I also got to wave hello to my parents which was nice. The third mile had the first longer stretch down on the water, which slowed things down a bit as the wind was pretty strong. We then made a right turn and headed back up towards the race center again.
3M were passed in 15:18 (5:10 3rd mile). The effort felt the same, but with the wind and hair pin turn, I figured it’d be a bit slower. Once through this 3rd mile, I knew that I was into the hardest stretch of the race, mentally at least. I tried to up the intensity and figured this would help me maintain pace. The course did one more hairpin up by the race center and then headed down to the water for the last time. This was the longest stretch on the water and the toughest in terms of wind. There were a couple more sharp turns before I passed 4M in 20:28 (5:09 split).
After this, there was a final turn around as I headed back towards the finish line. I passed by the last water-stop and didn’t even bother stopping. I tried to actively “switch gears” every minute or so. As I made one last turn towards home, someone shouted “only a half mile to go!” I looked at my watch and it said 3:00, so I figured that meant there were actually only about 600m left. I started to really pick it up and started to get some crowd support.
I had a lot of fun with the last 400m. I tried to kick it in pretty hard and I was trying to get the crowd into it. It was a lot of fun and I was feeling great. I knew that I was on track to set a big PR and get the win and I just really wanted to enjoy the moment. The crowd was great and loud and I felt awesome crossing the line and then hit my watch a few seconds later for 25:32 (FAT: 25:29, 5:01 last mile).
I jogged over and gave my parents a big hug. I was really, really pleased with this effort. I felt great during the race, both physically and mentally. I felt like a totally different runner than I did a couple of months ago.
I ate a cliff bar and had some water and then jogged the last two miles of the course very easily (no time). After this, I kind of walked around in a stupor while trying to re-hydrate and not pass out. After taking in probably a half liter or so of water and Gatorade, I started to feel a bit better. I did some stretching in the grass and then went and found the race director before the awards ceremony. I told them I was a collegian and wanted to donate my winnings to their charity (a local charter school). They were pretty psyched, so it was nice to make their day.
We stuck around for the awards ceremony and then grabbed dinner at a local pub. The owner was there and was very excited to find out that I had won the race. I even got a free meal out of it!
We drove back after that and I promptly fell asleep in the car. I came home and passed out around 10:00pm. Long day.
Overall, this was a really great effort and I felt awesome about it. I felt like there were a lot of reasons that this race could have poorly and I still ended up running what was an almost 30 second PR on a course that was definitely slower than long lakes – and I was entirely alone. I felt like I definitely could have run another 2km out there and that would have been a 31:50. On a track, with competition and pacing and 20 degrees cooler, I think that that time is definitely doable. I’m really looking forward to Princeton.
11M total for the day.
Splits
5:05
5:03 (10:08)
5:10 (15:18)
5:09 (20:28)
5:01 (25:29)
Total 25:29 for 8km (5:07.5 avg)
Sunday, March 20, 2011 – AM: I woke up naturally pretty early again. I was a bit stiff, but nothing too bad. I had a nice big breakfast and then biked over to play some tennis with the VC. It was pretty fun and I actually did surprisingly decently given that I was pretty tired and I hadn’t played tennis in a long time. I ended up playing for about 30 minutes. I didn’t want to go too long as I had planned to do my long run in the afternoon. It was a pretty easy effort and didn’t really take too much out of me.
AM2: I did full barefoot drills in some grass by the tennis center while the rents were still playing a bit. After this, I did core on the grass – 100s, 50s, 30x side dip, 90 sec plank, 90 sec side plank, 50x leg lift. Felt solid and it was nice to be outside in the warm sun.
I then walked over to the pool and soaked my legs in the very cool water for about 10-15 minutes before biking back to the condo for lunch.
PM: I was pretty exhausted after lunch and ended up taking a (somewhat involuntary) nap on the couch. I was feeling a bit better after that, so I decided to get up and go get my long-run done. It was cooler today (only in the upper 60s), so I wasn’t too worried about the heat. Mr. C was coming along with fluids, anyways, so I figured it’d be all good.
We left around 3pm and headed out on a looping course that stayed entirely on the bike trails. The course was made up of two big loops which went out of sea pines and then one smaller loop at the end to round up the mileage. I had mapped out the route on the roads and the bike paths are a bit windey alongside the roads, so it was probably a bit longer than it mapped out. Still, it mapped out to 20M even, so I knew it would be at least 20.
I felt surprisingly decent at first. I used the first 3M to get into it (I had remembered a where a few splits were in the course so I could tell what the pace was like) and from there was feeling pretty good. The first 3M were in 19:49 and the second were in 18:33. It was really windy along the ocean, so that took a good bit of energy to counter, but other than that it was a nice loop. After the 18:33, I actively slowed myself down because I didn’t want to be running that fast today. The rest of the run was between 6:20 6:30 pace, which felt good and comfortable.
I was feeling pretty good until about 13-14M. I took Gatorade at 6, 9, 12, and 15M, which seemed to help, but I definitely got to that glycogen depleted state a lot earlier than usual on long runs. As I said to Mr. C at the time, I didn’t feel much worse than I usually feel on long runs, I just started feeling it earlier. 14-15M felt more like 18-19M.
And so, the last few miles were pretty tough. I was pretty pooped by the end but managed to close the last mile in 5:53. I think that was mostly out of desire to get home and cool off and drink and eat.
Once I got inside, I noticed I was having some trouble breathing. Not sure if I’ve mentioned this yet, but there is an enormous amount of pollen on EVERYTHING. I used to have really terrible allergies, which have been getting better over the last few years. I think that running for 2+ hrs outside might have been enough to get my lungs a bit upset with all the pollen in the air. I took a cold shower to try to get as much pollen off of me as I could. I ended up feeling better pretty soon after.
The total run was 20M in 2:07:25 (6:22 pace)
Splits:
3M: 19:49 (6:36 pace)
6M: 38:23 (18:33 – 6:11 pace)
9M: 57:19 (18:56 – 6:19 pace)
12M: 1:16:19 (19:00 – 6:20 pace)
13.1M: 1:23:59 (7:14 – 6:29 pace)
16.2M: 1:43:37 (19:37 – 6:20 pace)
19M: 2:01:32 (17:55, 6:24 pace)
20M: 2:07:25 (5:53 pace)
Total for the week: 98 miles in 10 runs
No comments:
Post a Comment