Half a Mile From Tucson, By The Morning Light

I think you'll be pleasantly surprised at the body's resiliency after doing lots of loooooong runs. Plus, those marathons are both early enough in the cycle that you have plenty of time to recover and hone in on your speed.

Looks like a nice blend of workouts, too, though I'm surprised you're moving towards intervals rather than moving towards longer tempos as the cycle progresses.

Hello? Is this thing on?

Yup, this blog is still on. JUST finished 10x800 at 6:00 pace on mill. Sweaty mess but a smooth run - I resisted any urge to dial it down to something faster in light of it being a race week. Ran a good 12 on Sunday up in New Jersey (Delaware and Rairtain trail? Very nice) as my last longish run going into Sunday's upcoming trail race. 7:30s on the way out and 6:45s on the way back and felt pretty good and in control although I was definitely needing to work to hold it together. Trail racing is a totally different beast and frankly I haven't done squat on hills in months and that's going to bite back at me badly. There are some huge climbs I'm completely unready for. Its a two loop course and I must take loop 1 easy or I'll be in trouble. I'm hoping I can pace based on where we are in the relay placings and not have to gun it the whole time but we'll see. Then official Tuscon Training Plan (see last post with whole plan) starts Monday.

Right now? USA vs Jamaica in World Cup Soccer Qualifying. Turn on ESPN2 if you want to watch the game. They NEED to win after they pooped all over themselves in their last game down in Jamaica. I'm predicting (or is it just hoping?) that they get totally back on track tonight with a dominating 3-0 or 4-0 win.

Geesh, a lot has happened since I last posted. So the plan was to go up to Savageman, defend our title with a win in the relay and for me to blast away at a fast and hard trail run half marathon. Um, NONE OF THAT HAPPENED! Thursday night, I played soccer and got absolutely demolished by a goalie going up for a ball. I knew I had been hurt badly but hoped to recover in time for the triathalon relay. I got hit in the left ribs - having had broken ribs before I knew I would be hurting but could likely run within 3-4 days, albeit painfully. I did no running Friday and Saturday and it did seem to improve some but when I tried to warm up while my teammate was out biking, NO GO. I simply couldn't move faster than a walk without shooting pain. I tried to be a DNS by getting someone else to run the half marathon leg for me. Nope, race people wouldn't let that happen. I had to run or our team would be a DNF. Ugh. Then I came up with the bright idea of taking Oxycontin and then starting. I wish I was kidding! That dulled the pain enough that I could stumble through a stride so I set off slowly when my biker arrived. It was ugly. 8:30-something pace for the whole thing. Going uphill, I was more or less OK and could push things into normal paces in the 7s. Going downhill? OUCH! I had to basically sidestep walk slowly down any real incline and the uneven footing on the trail was killing me. So I would have 7:00 miles uphill and 12:00 miles down. I took a 2nd (YIKES!!) Oxy halfway through and so the 2nd half of the race went by in a fog. Yeah, I know, I know. Stupid on so many levels so you don't need to pile on. Very bad idea to run after taking something that powerful. I was completely zonked out there and could barely even feel my legs making contact with the ground. I would never have run if I hadn't been part of a team but I felt like I had to get out there and get a finish for us. Needless to say, we didn't win....we ended up in 4th place. Our biker had his own problems on the ride and handed it off to me in 4th place as well. I passed one slow guy during my leg but the 3rd place team blew by me. Had I been in normal running mode, we could have had 2nd but 1st was way way way ahead of us and wouldn't have been catchable on any kind of day. Their biker was apparantly an Olympian. Funny thing is that of course my legs feel GREAT. Going that slow, its like I just did an easy recovery run. But my left side? Worse than before....so I went off to the ER Monday and I have a torn intercostal muscle. Yeeowtch. No left handed pitching or golf me anytime soon! For running, rest will fix me relatively quickly. Ideally I would be diving into Tucson training heavily this week so the timing sucks. I'm resting now but will try and run long and slowly this weekend. Kids, don't try that at home. I do not recommend at all taking something like that and then trying to run. It was a very weird experience. But I lived to tell the tale and won't do it again. On the plus side, I am in five (!!) fantasy football leagues this year which is nutty but I went 4-1 this weekend so I got that going for me which is nice.

eeks

Wow. That was crazy.

I just got my Chicago confirmation ticket. Looking at the little booklet that came with it, I guess Chicago is going to a multiple wave start for the first time. 30 mins between waves. Probably a good thing. The two times I've done Chicago, it was pretty crazy getting to the starting corrals. My first year, MVW and I barely made it in before the gun. Schuey and I got in fine last year but it was a madhouse. I'm bib 1853 in Corral A. I'll probably run the slowest time of anyone in the whole Corral since I'm just going to do Chicago as a very slow very long run. I wonder if the Wave 2 people will catch me!

My same plan at NY, Chris. I'm kind of getting excited for Tucson as my friend still raves about the course and its downhill-ness (if that is a word). Just don't get too carried away in Chicago unless of course, it is a great day and you're going to hit that PR (as you never know).

Strike 1 - Pissing in the residence of a (probable) mass murderer.
Strike 2 - Running a trail half-marathon on a double dose of oxycotin.

Please no Strike 3.

Michele "1L" Keane wrote:My same plan at NY, Chris. I'm kind of getting excited for Tucson as my friend still raves about the course and its downhill-ness (if that is a word). Just don't get too carried away in Chicago unless of course, it is a great day and you're going to hit that PR (as you never know).

Ha ha - no chance of that in Chicago. I'll be heading out at a very sane and slow pace and my only goal is to just finish. So are you officially IN for Tucson!!?? That's great, if so.

I am indeed officially in for Tucson. I made plane and hotel reservations. I've stayed at the host hotel before, but it was early June, and it was hot. Hope the weather will be perfect.

I came here for inspiration. Sigh.

Michele "1L" Keane wrote:I am indeed officially in for Tucson. I made plane and hotel reservations. I've stayed at the host hotel before, but it was early June, and it was hot. Hope the weather will be perfect.

Very cool! And will we see you here in Vienna before then for the JFK 50?

For me, I took a few days off, walked some on the treadmill and then finally ran today. It wasn't great and I'm not recovered. My legs feel fantastic which is to be expected with the unplanned days off but I just can't breathe fully. Carrying on at a pretty slow pace just felt like so much more work because I had to take these little shallow breaths. I'm heading to the hot tub and see if that will help. Its an annoying little injury, this intercostal thing.

Today was my first day doing a run where I felt pain free from the torn intercostal muscle on my left side. I don't feel it at all when I walk around now. It stabs at me when I get up from sitting or lying down but for the first time today it didn't feel painful running. I ran during lunch downstairs watching Crimson Tide. I forgot how GOOD that movie was! Ok maybe not a truly great movie but there are some scenes back and forth between Denzel and Hackman that were pretty hair raising. I hadn't seen the movie in years and now I want to watch the whole thing again instead of just the 48 mins in the middle I watched.

Now that I'm pain free, I'm jumping back into my Tucson plan which means a 72 mile week this week. Not sure why I set it up this way but I have an 12 Friday and an 18 Sunday. That's two pretty long runs and odd for me to do a Friday one. But hey, I think it works for what I need to be doing to get back on track with my training. 10 tomorrow (hmm, do I keep the tempo part in there? That I might skip) and 10 Wednesday. Ok, I'm back in and on plan.

I just had to go back and look up race results for the 365 Record Board thing and you know what I figured out? I've completed 14 marathons!! WOW. I remember the first one in October 2008 like it was yesterday. Day I turned 40. 13 more finished since then and two drop outs (York 2009, Chicago 2010). Quite a few of them done as training/fun runs and/or helping pace a buddy to a BQ. If I'm able to do Chicago, MCM and Tucson this Fall and December, that will be 17 total marathons? Holy smokes, you would think from that that I love the distance.....well, its definitely been a case of quantity over quality for me at 26.2. I wish I had only done 3-4 of them by now but that I had a 2:XX time among those!

Chris M wrote:I just had to go back and look up race results for the 365 Record Board thing and you know what I figured out? I've completed 14 marathons!! WOW. I remember the first one in October 2008 like it was yesterday. Day I turned 40. 13 more finished since then and two drop outs (York 2009, Chicago 2010). Quite a few of them done as training/fun runs and/or helping pace a buddy to a BQ. If I'm able to do Chicago, MCM and Tucson this Fall and December, that will be 17 total marathons? Holy smokes, you would think from that that I love the distance.....well, its definitely been a case of quantity over quality for me at 26.2. I wish I had only done 3-4 of them by now but that I had a 2:XX time among those!

Love this! I can so relate, only I'm much dumber than you since I've run 39 of them, and I still hate the distance Either NY or Tucson will be 40, and I'm definitely going to finish at least 50 of them, just to say I did.

Michele "1L" Keane wrote:

Chris M wrote:I just had to go back and look up race results for the 365 Record Board thing and you know what I figured out? I've completed 14 marathons!! WOW. I remember the first one in October 2008 like it was yesterday. Day I turned 40. 13 more finished since then and two drop outs (York 2009, Chicago 2010). Quite a few of them done as training/fun runs and/or helping pace a buddy to a BQ. If I'm able to do Chicago, MCM and Tucson this Fall and December, that will be 17 total marathons? Holy smokes, you would think from that that I love the distance.....well, its definitely been a case of quantity over quality for me at 26.2. I wish I had only done 3-4 of them by now but that I had a 2:XX time among those!

Love this! I can so relate, only I'm much dumber than you since I've run 39 of them, and I still hate the distance Either NY or Tucson will be 40, and I'm definitely going to finish at least 50 of them, just to say I did.

Yeah, its all kind of confusing to me. I'm clearly way better at the 10 mile and half marathon distance and I enjoy those races much more but instead I never train specifically for those and keep throwing myself at 26.2 and getting demolished on the rocks. By the way, for Tucson, I was told the best Mexican place we should head to post race is.....Cafe Poca Cosa. Works for me!

http://cafepocacosatucson.com/

Works for me as well. And I love the half marathon distance too. I'm glad that most marathons have added a half, so once I get the 50 knocked off -it is all half marathons for me.

We love Mexican food, and I'm guessing that this is not the Tex-Mex we had in Atlanta. Here in Cleveland, Mexican food consists of Taco Bell and Chipolte.

Chris M wrote:

Michele "1L" Keane wrote:

Chris M wrote:I just had to go back and look up race results for the 365 Record Board thing and you know what I figured out? I've completed 14 marathons!! WOW. I remember the first one in October 2008 like it was yesterday. Day I turned 40. 13 more finished since then and two drop outs (York 2009, Chicago 2010). Quite a few of them done as training/fun runs and/or helping pace a buddy to a BQ. If I'm able to do Chicago, MCM and Tucson this Fall and December, that will be 17 total marathons? Holy smokes, you would think from that that I love the distance.....well, its definitely been a case of quantity over quality for me at 26.2. I wish I had only done 3-4 of them by now but that I had a 2:XX time among those!

Love this! I can so relate, only I'm much dumber than you since I've run 39 of them, and I still hate the distance Either NY or Tucson will be 40, and I'm definitely going to finish at least 50 of them, just to say I did.

Yeah, its all kind of confusing to me. I'm clearly way better at the 10 mile and half marathon distance and I enjoy those races much more but instead I never train specifically for those and keep throwing myself at 26.2 and getting demolished on the rocks. By the way, for Tucson, I was told the best Mexican place we should head to post race is.....Cafe Poca Cosa. Works for me!

http://cafepocacosatucson.com/

Chris that 2:xx will come! I can remember when I first starting thinking about running a 2:xx (2008) from that time it took me until Boston 2011 to complete that goal!!!

You keep throwing yourself at the marathon distance because I truly believe you like the challenge of it! Whether you want to admit it or not you want to achieve a goal that you have set out to do and I have a feeling you won't stop until you reach it. That is just who you are and the best thing about it you set a great example to Cassidy about shooting for the moon and giving it 100%!!

The day will come my man!

I think I've finally licked the muscle tear in my left side. I seem to be able to run pain free now. So I'm going to try and cover the 26.2 on Sunday at Chicago. It won't be fast! I may even resort to walking through some of the water stations. I just want a time on my feet slow long run and to survive it so that I jump right back into training next week uninterrupted. I fly out there after Cassidy's soccer game on Saturday morning.

Chris - I recommend walking through the water stops or "50 steps" every two miles. Not only does it keep you in training mode, but it slows you down amongst the adrenaline surge you will feel with the race atmosphere. I have done it before with very positive results and I didn't feel at all beat up when I finished. After all, you said it yourself, this is about time on your feet not time on your watch.

(I plan to do the same in NY).

Michele "1L" Keane wrote:Chris - I recommend walking through the water stops or "50 steps" every two miles. Not only does it keep you in training mode, but it slows you down amongst the adrenaline surge you will feel with the race atmosphere. I have done it before with very positive results and I didn't feel at all beat up when I finished. After all, you said it yourself, this is about time on your feet not time on your watch.

(I plan to do the same in NY).

Ditto this.

I would suggest walking for a minute or so during your gel intake. Plan something like 5 such breaks to keep the training run in check, and to ensure you don't complete deplete yourself. The goal here should be 3:30 on your feet in an effort that you will be fully recovered from in 3 days.

And I promise I won't break all the beer at Sweetwater.

I had a great time in Chicago. Flew into town after coaching Cassidy's soccer team Saturday mornining (1-0 win!) went to the expo and then met up with the whole Schumacher family to hang out, have an awesome dinner and chill with Kristina. We had a blast.



Sunday I headed from the hotel over to Schueys so we could walk on down to our corral. My plan was to run the race as a slow paced LSD run right at 8:00 pace but I got caught up in the excitement and was doing 7:10-7:15s early instead. Ooops. Felt like I was barely moving and literally thousands of people were charging by me but I never came close to 8:00 pace all day. 7:38 was my slowest mile all day. Man, I suck at disciplined pacing. At around 10 miles. I noticed my side muscle is still bugging me some and impacting my breathing some so I started to think about Plan B since I had chucked the 3:30 easy time on my feet run out the door. I ended up going through the half at 1:37-something instead of the planned 1:45 and decided a change of plans was needed. For maybe 60 seconds I thought "If I run a 1:30 2nd half, that's a PR...." but I was kind of stuck in the 7:10-7:35 pace range and couldn't seem to run any slower (the goal) or faster. The sub 7:00 stuff will have to wait for Tucson. So I stopped at a McDonalds for a much needed bathroom break. Took 10+ mins off walking around and cooling down then knocked out another 7 at 7:30 pace to make it just over 20 at 7:30. Then a walk/shuffle back. I ran into Dave's wife Britt and we walked over to see Dave post-race and then I met Da STUD Schuey (3:01 when he was trained up for about a.....3:20....he is amazing) back at his house. Then over to Sweetwater for beers and food and watching NFL. A fun day with a good workout thrown in. Saw Steve, Jeff, John P and Pete as well at Sweetwater and enjoyed catching up with everyone.



During this weekend, my daughter was in a clip on Nickeloden. They are doing a bunch of features on "Worldwide Day of Play" and did a story on her friend Carina who I've had on our soccer team for years. Carina's Dad is a avid biker and formed a "bike to school" program where a ton of kids meet at their house and then do a bike ride over to the school. The Nickeloden cameras came and filmed them one day and interviewed Carina a bunch and Cassidy got some lines in as well. She's the super tall one (5'6" at 11 years old!) who is wearing the white sweater with red stripes. She has a couple of lines in the middle and then that is also her in the blue shirt on the left with two of her buddies in the final scene of the clip.



http://www.nick.com/videos/clip/worldwide-day-of-play-2012-bike-train-clip.html



Next up for me is Marine Corps Marathon in a couple of weeks. This time, I'm running the whole thing at 8:00.

I figured you did exactly what you did - smart move, Chris.

That is a cool video!

Sounds like a good workout - and an even better time. What can we do to get your enthusiasm in check for Marine Corps so you can actually stick to an 8/mi pace? Hm...

Very cool video! Who thought you'd be pleased that your daughter is part of a notorious biker gang? Congtats.