Head Cold Upon Me

My annual head cold is upon me. I started to feel a sore throat coming on Saturday evening. The draining started yesterday (just when I thought I was out of the woods!). NyQuil induced sleep last night. I woke up this morning and felt like my brains were still lying on the pillow. I sipped coffee for an hour and gradually woke up. It would have been better if I had orange juice but I (((love))) coffee.

Won't run  until the weekend at the earliest.

AT Run

I decided to run Valle Vista with the club today. I had things to do today so running early was a good option. I haven't run anything approaching AT since May of 2011. I was realistic enough to hope to break 25 minute for the hilly 3 mile course. It roughly translates to 5k on the flats. I did a twenty minute easy warmup. The race itself went off as expected. The first mile is mostly uphill. My goal was to run 85-90% but my heart rate was rarely over 80% going up the hill. It felt odd to be running anything sustained. It had just been too long since doing anything resembling AT effort. Once I leveled off my HR gradually floated up towards 85% and frankly I decided to keep it at this level until I hit the downhill. I glanced at my watch around the two mile point. It was over 17 minutes. An all time PW ( personal worst ). I kept the effort going back down to the college and crossed in 24:36. About what I expected. Just like in the past, Tom's all out effort was faster than my AT. HE RAN 24:12. Tom and I jogged around campus for another 17 minutes. My total was 61 minutes and change. I didn't sleep well last night and frankly have not been sawing Z's like I prefer for the last week or two. For a retired guy, I ought to be sleeping like a puppy dog. Several things I have decided. 1. I am going to a three day running week. No big extra mileage. 60-90 minutes. I have been thinking about this for some time. Galloway recommends it and I think he is right. 2. I'll walk two other days. 60-90 minutes. 3. I get injured doing fast reps so I am going back to AT-Threshold work. I seem to tolerate it better. I'll test my AT every 3-4 weeks. I am not used to AT so I'll work at getting efficient running in the 85-90% range. If things work my AT will get faster. If not, then I'll continue as secret jogger.

70 minutes again..again..again...

The weather cooled down making this morning great running conditions. I did 70 minutes around campus and up in the hills with Danny and Tom (as usual).  Kept my HR under 140 but didn't feel as perky as I did on Tuesday. There is no rhyme or reason for feeling good or bad these days. Not that today was bad. No question that the biggest challenge is running no matter what.

Dictating an easy pace

Upping the ante. Ran 75 minutes this morning with the last 60 in the company of Danny and Tom. I kept my HR really low. 120-130. Danny was struggling and Tom has a minor case of DOMS from running Holy City last Sunday (read: BIG uphills and BIG downhills for 9.1 miles). So no one complained of the easy pace. I felt great. Ever since I just backed off, I am feeling much better.

Jake joined us for breakfast and he was beat to a pulp after running every day for the last 19 days straight. He fired his coach. Big lesson for me is to stop screwing around and just keep the runs easy. Once every week or so I can go do something fast but nothing where I can't recover.

Lucy my once and future running partner

This is Lucy. Well, she is somewhere in this brood of puppies. She'll show up in around six weeks and gradually become my new running partner. She doesn't know this of course. Born June 1st 2012. It's been two and half years since Amber "The Wonder Dog" passed on. I have missed her every day. Lucy will be a welcome addition to our family.

The Hansen's soda can was plopped down in the pen to show how tiny these pups are right now. My son, my wife and my son's girlfriend cooked up this as father's day surprise. I was just on the verge of talking to my wife about getting another dog.

I was preempted.

FARTHER'S Day

I ran farther than normal because I heard that it was FARTHER'S DAY. So I did a 78 minute round trip from my house up into Stevens Creek Park and back home again. Plenty of hills. Only later on did I find out it was FATHER'S DAY which I meant I should have been sitting home with a pipe and slippers watching sports on the TV. Interesting thing. There were two really steep portions. Nothing too long. Maybe 100 meters max on each but I found that I went up faster by walking them. My HRM stayed up around 135-140 on both sections. I kept my HR in the 130-140 range over the whole run. Doing this made the workout more enjoyable.

An hour with some pacing

WVC again. Ran the campus and track for an hour while the club did all courses day (meaning that the runners could race any of the road courses that are normally run during the year).

Danielle (I am coaching her) went to the track to run 2 x 800 in 3:05. I told her I would take her through the first lap at pace plus. I wanted her to run negative splits. On the first one we went through in 96 and she ran the next 400 in 82. After jogging around we did a second one. I took her through slightly faster hitting the 400 in 94. She ran an 84 on the second lap to ace a 2:58. We jogged a campus loop after.

Each time we hit 400 during the 800 meter reps, I thought about going on but decided not to. I doubt I could have matched her speed and frankly I was only too happy to just step aside. 94-96 felt easy enough after months of besieging 80 seconds.

Bowden

Danny and I ran over at WVC. Took it slow and easy for an hour. I also ran 15 beforehand from my house so I got in a total of 75 minutes. As we were cooling down we saw Don Bowden. Danny knows him and I have briefly met him in the last. He is quite a guy. First US runner to break the four minute mile barrier in 1957. I got a chance to talk with him before I drove down to breakfast. Humble but very knowledgeable guy. It was a real treat.

Pounding Cirlcles

Danny and I explored new levels of slow as we pounded out artistic circles with our feet as we ran around West Valley College. It felt cooler than Sunday.  My intention was to up the ante to 75 minutes but I failed miserably and stopped at my usual 70. Not out of exhaustion. Just because another five minutes (towards the end) seemed pointless.

Afterward we drove up to Menlo to see Big Bill for a chiro adjustment. Then we had the giant bowl of oatmeal at a nearby restaurant. At Bill's office they are starting to call Danny and I thing one and two.

Tom will be back on Thursday so I'll need to strap on the HRM to insure that I don't go over 70%.

66 minutes

Instead of going to the track I decided what I needed was an easy day out on the roads. I wore both the HRM and Garmin.  It was warm out (and going to be a hot day) so I knew that the HRM would tell me to slow down. I ran for 66 minutes and sure enough my pace dropped off sharply about half way through the run as my HR started to hit 70%. I fell just short of 6 miles over the first 60 minutes which means I grazed a ten pace. Reality sucks but after the run I felt good. So whatever pace it was, the run worked.

I have had a cough for the past month (no, it's not lung cancer). I get this cough whenever I am over training plain and simple. It is my DEW line. DEW standing for Distant Early Warming.  No new news here. This was something I dealt with back when I was a much faster runner. I may think I am not over training but the cough doesn't lie. I don't get sick. I just gradually get run down. THEN I GET A NASTY COLD.

The key for me is using the HRM or just running a heck of a lot slower than I really want to.

At 67, I can't really listen to my body because I don't hear it too well these days. Better to use tools that tell me when I am screwing up (or run woefully slow).  It's funny, when I do this, on the days I choose to run hard, the speed is there. Of course speed is relative these days.

70 minutes

70 minutes this morning. Never ended up doing the 800 meter trial I was planning. It was a combo of a twitchy hamstring and personal ambition. I passed on the 800, 1500 and 3000 and jogged around the track chatting with folks in between their events. Had fun joking around and generally being social. Danny ran the 800 and hit 3 flat. So did Bill in his 800 race. 3 flat seems to be the new 2 flat. Sort of like 60 is the new 40.

Route 66

Thursday was another Forbes Mill run. Jake and I ran the first loop together and then I ran the second loop by myself, letting Jake get a head start. All in all I ran 66 minutes total including my neighborhood shake out jog. Jake is running six days a week. He has good and bad days but is hoping that he will adjust. I still run 4-5 days. I am not sure I can really handle more than that. Physically I don't seem to recover.

Back to Forbes

After jogging for ten minutes around my neighborhood I drove over to Forbes Mill and did several loops with Jake. 26:44 on the first and 24:53 on the second. I ran an extra 6 1/2 minutes to get myself up to 68 total. Could feel the deep tissue work from Monday. Especially in the right hamstring. My running shoe, the Adidas Adapt is becoming extinct. I have Christine at Athletic Performance seeing if she can find me a few pairs through her channels. If not, it'll the "find the new shoe" game.

Track Reps

I went back to the track on Sunday morning. Second time time this week. I ran 40 minutes total. Sandwiched in there was some reps

1 x 200 in 37
1 x 300 in 59
1 x 300 in 37

Better than last weekend. I did add in a fifth day to burn calories since dieting bonks me.

On Monday I drove up to Menlo Park for my every two week massage.

55 minute social

Socialized my way through  55 minutes of running over at WVC.  This will be my second week of running 5 days if I get in a run on Sunday. Why am I running 5 days? Because there are two ways to drop weight. Cut calories or increase running and eat the same (or pretty much the same).. I don't want to do doubles so I have decided to run 5 days. This will get me up around 28-30 mpw. Nothing that big  but more than I have been running over the past few years. The last two weeks have been another lesson in "hurt" management. My left knee was bothering me. Then my right ankle. Big Bill adjusted my knee and that has been better. I iced and taped my right ankle and have been able to run without discomfort.

I talked to Tim Rostege today. At 72 he is slogging his way back into shape. We both have well over 100K on our legs. As Tim said, "It wasn't getting to 100,000 that was tough. The last 4,000 after that has been tough."

This is what 98, 304 pennies look like. There are days when my legs feel like 98,304 pennies.
This equals two cubic feet. In my case it equals two legs.

98,304 

Ninety-eight thousand three hundred and four Pennies
[ Two cubic feet ]