65 minutes of really decent....

It's been a heater for the past several days so I decided to get out earlier than normal. I motored out of the house at around 7:30 am and ran via the RR tracks to De Anza. After about 30 minutes of running including some BIG loops * I went to the track and ran 20 minutes of 100 meter strides followed by 300 meters of slow jogging. Then I ran around the college a bit more before heading on home.

65 minutes total. I felt really decent.





*Big loops are once around the soccer field and once around the track including the parr course section at the west end.

SNORCLE Run

I was out and running just after 8 am. I did my usual RR Tracks, McClellan, De Anza College route. I had covered around 34 minutes when I ran one of former work colleagues and we ran for another half hour or so. We chatted up Snorcle (The Sun-Oracle merger) Then I headed back home rounding things out at 75 minutes total. The good news was my calf was fine and I felt no tiredness from yesterday's 60 minutes of running.

Back to Snorcle. It is hard to believe that "The Larry" won't come unglued sometime soon because right now he is acting very unLarry-like. He hasn't really ripped apart the Labs and much more of the world formerly known as Sun has survived.

Ah, but it is early yet. Even Waterloo didn't get started until about noon. Time yet for more bodies to fill the slopes, ridges and fields of Silicon Valley.

Duke takes the plunge!

65 minutes with no problems!

I got over to WVC early this morning and ran an easy 65 minutes. No trouble from the calf. I even ran around campus a bit which meant some short uphills. It was fun to watch the club race the mile on the track won when one of the runners did 5:15. Incredible how slow we have gotten. My fastest for the club mile back in 1982 was 4:41. I would have lapped a guy running 5:15. But then to put it in perspective, I was out kicked down the stretch by Mr. Saturday morning, Ray Russell. My bad because I thought I had the race in hand and had let up slightly. Ray came on me so suddenly and quietly that I could not hope to respond.

The club workout was depleted because of the Corporate Meet which isn't really much of a corporate meet at all any more. It is a cobbled together track meet with some road running to call it corporate is a misnomer. It is Lockheed and an entity called SCVAL which is made up of folks who might have once worked for a corporation. If there are two events that I would put a pistol to the head of it's Holy City and the Corporate Meet.

But they don't do me or anyone else "no" harm and I am not involved with either one so I just move on.

Another Day at Rainbow Park

It was assistant coaching day over at Rainbow Park. I drove over early and ran around for an hour. I ran partially by myself and the rest with Jake. It was overcast but mild so it was a great morning to work out. The only glitch came towards the end of the run when my right calf tightened up. I slowed way down and it felt better almost immediately. I limped in (well, not really limping). Then I jogged around slowly the park and felt nothing so that was a better end to things. I went heavy on the massage stick and also took a rare dose of ibuprofen.

Van Aaken @ Miller Middle School

I did secret miles at my house running a 5 minute shake down.

I drove over to meet with Jake at Miller track. We ran for 45 minutes before Jake took off to do a few faster loops. So 50 minutes total.

Then we went over to Rainbow Park and met up with Jake's Tuesday morning, cross country summer training group. There were maybe 15 kids total who showed. Jake had them warm up for a mile, do some drills and then head out on the roads for varying distances.

While they were out on the roads, Jake and I took off and drove around the neighborhood making sure that everyone was okay.

So back to me..... :-)

My legs felt good but the pace was very slow. 10-11 minutes a mile when we measured it. We were touring Jake's half mile loop. Probably a good place for time trials now and then. My plan is to keep building minutes and then do a version of Van Aaken but my every other day version 2.0.

A pause in the comeback

Yesterday, I made it back to 25 minutes of on and off running. Monday is an day off. Time to recover from a grand total of 50 minutes over three days. But at least it is start. Due to the science of Mucinex, I seem to be getting this whole upper respiratory thing under control even though last night before bed, I was slightly clogged and wheezing. Nothing to sneeze at but it's more sound effects than anything because I am having no trouble breathing. But it sounds asthma-like.

Tomorrow I plan to go over to Rainbow Park and run with Jake (if he hasn't bashed himself to smithereens). I will get my first inkling of what it is like to coach high school kids en mass. Actually I will be more of an observer than a participant.

Jake has really done a job on himself. He just can't turn off the I want to run too hard and then not recover machine and at our age that is the death of running as we knew it. I am going to ask him to give me 3 months to get him right. I doubt he'll take me up on it but I believe I could get him to a point where he is faster than he was last year.

But so much for my ego....

Physician heal thyself.

Run-Walk

I ran-walked for 30 minutes this morning. 4 minutes running and 1 minute walking. Probably could have run straight through but decided to continue to build and take it easy.

Weather was near perfect. high 50's and sunny.

Cough and draining felt better this morning. Things breaking up nicely.

The Wayback Machine

I ran 10 minutes on Friday and another 15 minutes on Saturday. I am hopefully on the slow comeback trail from the combo of a cold and allergies that have plagued me over the last 6 weeks.,

I have been thinking a great deal about aging and running. I could think about it in relation to other sports too but running is my poison so that's where my brain resides for better or worse.
I went over to the club workout at West Valley College. Once there, I ran into Tom and Jim, both who are shadows of their former selves. Jim is a larger version (his words) of what he sued to be, fighting weight and bad knees. Tom is still slim but his knees are bothering him too. Danny ran by doing a 3 mile workout. He looked slow, heavy and in pain from the effort.

Jake showed up at breakfast at Carrows totally wiped out from his daily short hard runs (versus his weekly long progression hard runs). Dimitri repeated his take of the Former Soviet Union and all there attempts to understand and conquer the recovery quotient. In the end, they found that rest the most effective anecdote to hard running. All the other stuff, supplements, ice baths, massage and even some very illegal stuff, didn't hold up over time.

On a personal level I am seeing many different versions of the decay of aging. Hell, I am going through it.

I told Jim that I run every other day (mostly) but very slowly most of the time. And if I am good little boy and stick to this simple recipe I may get to run hard once every 2nd or 3rd week over some distance south of 5K.

Big Bad Billy (my nickname for my chiropractor) told me that recovery is in the head. By this he meant that if you believed in your program and the recovery techniques you were using (really, really believed) you would in fact recover. But you can fool yourself. It is a bit like the movie Somewhere in Time. The hero wills himself back to 1912 to meet the love of his life. He literally hypnotizes his way through time. He is forewarned that he needs to divest himself of anything that represents the era he is traveling from. It works and he meets the woman he loves. But in the end he finds a simple penny in his pocket from his own time period and is launched back to the present.

Training has always been that way for me. If I believe and trust what I am doing I will get faster. As a veteran runner it might only be faster than what I was doing last year but I do progress. But if I find that penny (in this case start to veer from what I believe) I will be launched back to the slower present.

I was running very well in March and April but began to train too quickly on my easy days. I had put the HRM away and was untethered. On almost every run I was coming through certain milestones faster than I had in 2-3 years. Then, I time trialed one of my courses, running close to what I had done at age 62! At age 65 you don't get faster than you were at 62 (given that you were always running and testing yourself). The Wayback machine was humming. I was beginning to think that perhaps I could wayback it to age 60 or even 59.

Then I found the 2010 penny. A cold, followed by an ear infection and then God knows what (allergies, another cold???) and I was back at "go".

So I am rebuilding. I have decided that I will put back on the HRM. And when I begin to feel really good, I will not get full of myself because I am running faster in training. The HRM will decide the pace. The only time I will take myself off the leash is when I am time trialing a course. I will use AT runs to chart my progress. 100 meter strides will be my only speed work.

All well and good if I stick to it but my plan is to remember that the machine works if I give it a chance. I just have to remember that the "Time Monster" rides the Wayback machine too.

Maybe the Uncold

My back went out yesterday. No totally but enough to invoke the use of ibuprofen. I slipped in to Big Bad Billy's today and got an adjustment. We ended up discussing "my cold" and he thinks I had a bad attack of allergies. After all, no real sore throat, chills or aches and pains. Just drip...drip...drip...cough...cough...cough. Perhaps the UNCOLD!

In any case whatever it was, it seems to be backing off. I feel better.

Cold.....

Still have that cold. I believe I am over the worst of it. I have decided to forget running until this weekend at the very earliest and then do a slow build back up to my normal distance. Last time I went right back. Not this time. I figure this time I will come back a bit slower. I will also strap back on the HRM. I don't trust myself. I was doing too many secret harder-than-necessary runs.

The trail will be closed for 45-60 days this summer anyway so I can focus on getting stronger by going longer.

Things were going too well

I seem to remember back thinking in mid April that things were going to well. I believed I was on the verge of a sub 19 on the Forbes Mill loop. Since late April I have had a cold, an ear infection and now another cold. So here I am a month and half later hacking up phlegm. I actually don't feel that badly. But the persistent "coughing" message is clear. Immune system compromised. Better take it easy. Any plans for sub 19 are on hold for now.

If I look back I believe my one big mistake was not holding back more when my legs felt so good. Since I am not going anywhere, I will just focus on recovery.

Received word that Ron Zarate died in May. He was a great runner back in the days when I first showed up on the racing scene (early to mid 1970's). He was about my height but stocky in the Prefontaine model. I never really knew him but I knew he was fast. Died of cancer at age 58.

To run or not to run

60 minutes of running this morning. Nothing to write home about. It was warm early on. A precursor to a 90 degree day. I wasn't exactly dragging but I felt as if the stuffing had been knocked out of me so I kept the pace very slow and easy.

I seem to be fighting something off. Allergies or an infection. I figured that I would find out by forcing the situation (a bit). Either I am going to get a worse of I will be able to handle this and slowly get better. If I am sick it is strange because my appetite is still there. I am sleeping okay. Just a intermittent cough that seems endless.

I will take it day by day.

Varied Running

Jake and I met at Forbes. We did a slow loop in just a shade under 29 but 4 minutes faster than the last time we ran. Then we did an interval-type loop stopping every two minutes or so for a short rest before launching into the next 2 minutes of harder running. We got to the half way in 11:38 (running time) and were headed for 22 minutes total when I chose to blast from the last marker in to the finish. I blew down the last section in 1:47!!! This added up to 21:37 running time.

I have to say that "I felt marvelous" on the last loop.

With ten minutes of shakedown beforehand, I covered 61 minutes of varied running.

60 minutes

I had to get up early drive Alex to the airport. He is the one who now carries the fly on business torch. I pass it to him willingly. I am still trying to figure out how I ducked the whole traveling thing during my last gig. How did I ever get to be a VP with so little travel?






Once I got back from dropping him off, I hung out at the house until around 11:30 AM and then went out and ran a very easy 60 minutes. The weather was very moderate. 60's. Spring-like.

Hoka Hey!

Don't break this model

I got out mid morning and ran for 75 minutes. It was all super slow stuff. It's been warm this past weekend but it was maybe mid 60's while I was out there today. I was channeling Van Aaken so I not only ran slow but also threw in a couple of walking breaks.

It is hard for me to run slow (even after all of this time practicing it) but I know that over the long haul, I will feel much better for it. The faster runs come from my foundation of super slow runs, taking whole days off and only adding judicious amounts of tempo work. When I break this model, I break myself.

Return to WVC

I finally made it back over to West Valley College (WVC) this morning. The club was running "all courses day" which meant you could choose which of the road courses you wanted to run.

I chose none of the above.....

I ran for an easy 70 minutes around campus stopping now and then to chat with folks I hadn't talked to in months. It was nice seeing people and catching up. I can't complain. I actually felt OK even though I could tell that I was still in recovery mode from Thursday's steady effort.

Breakfast afterward.

Two good loops

I ran at Forbes today. Jake is off in Texas someplace so I ran my own pace which was very different from last Monday. I did the first loop in 22:39 and the second in 22:33. I sandwiched this inside 65 minutes of total running. It was definitely warmer but I can't say that the heat got to me. My legs felt good considering that I ran a slow 60 minutes yesterday. For a brief moment I was the fastest guy on the trail. But any local stud could have blown by me. They were just absent during the time I was out there.

Actually it all broke out something like this.

• 5 minutes of shakedown at home
• 1 x 2.7 in 22:39
• Jog over to the school and back which took me roughly 5 minutes and change.
• 1 x 2.7 in 22:33
• Easy jog of 10 minutes around the warm down walking loop and back up the trail a bit and return.

The Path to the 60 minute run

I ran 60 minutes very slow today. It is heating up a bit. Quite a change from last week when storm clouds were gathering over the Bay Area. Actually it felt good to run "warm". I jogged over to the college and did my usual loops. around the track and soccer field.

Dwight (he of the 100 mpw) is now ensconced in South San Jose. He lives close to the trails down in that area. John, Jake and I used to train down there at Hellyer Park but that was 32-35 years ago when we were local studs.