9.21.08

Wow wow wow. Lot of action today.

Well it's Sunday and you know what that means.....wake up call by Mercedes!!! yaaay. Arrgh what a horrid way to start yet another Sunday, and I was sleeping sooooooo good. I could feel myself coming out of a deep sleep and I tried to hold on to it, but she just kept going. Ach, makes me so mad.

Somehow I managed to get up for church, and actually I wasn't all that tired - I guess I've gotten used to the 4 hours of sleep Saturday night. Church went fine, but as I said before our group is broken up so it's a little weird. The theme is "live like you're dying" and it's actually really relevant to our let it slide mindsets nowadays. The pastors wife actually had a brain tumor and she talked about the effect it had on her life, and how she was just happy to wake up, be able to brush her hair, the little things we all take for granted. She also said she changed her mindset about how to live, and told us what it was like to start realizing that you could be sitting at the Lord's feet in a week. That's tough stuff to swallow, but it was pretty awesome too.

So church was fine, had some spaghetti for lunch, then watched a movie. It was Prefontaine. I hadn't seen the Jared Leto version. It was good, but I don't think a lot of the attitudes they made Pre have really existed. But other things seemed realistic (just comparing it to the books I've read about Bowerman and Pre). I like without limits better, but this movie is about running, pre, and bowerman, so it's right up there in my book.

Ah the run today. Holy smokes this is going to be a long entry, because it was a long run. May have to finish it tomorrow.

Well first I went over to middlebrook, to the OTHER soccer complex. I guess we're big on soccer here. Well it is also a small park with baseball, but behind that is....you guessed it, more soccer fields. Actually I just looked it up, it's ball camp community park. Here is the map. I ran a little around the track to start, then headed all the way down middlebrook and turned around at gallaher. Google says it's 3.9 miles, and that was about what I estimated it at too.
The thing you have to understand is that middlebrook pike is not flat, there is a huge hill on that first part, where the 169 is. It's a gradual incline that just goes on forever, then there are more rolling and graduals as you travel on down. I was doing okay, but the heat was really bearing down on me for most of the run as there is also little shade. Also when you reach that curve just before halfway, the sidewalk goes into a major intersection. I end up having to dodge and weave traffic there. It's the most dangerous part of the run, but there is no way around it because there isn't a sidewalk on the other side! Thanks civic engineers.

Heading back the hills and heat were already slowing me down a bit, but I pressed on as at that point I had only been running just over 45 minutes. My goal was to go out 35 minutes and come back for water. So I'd be hitting my water station at 1:10 minutes and have 34 minutes left to run. I know that's a long time without water, but I would have had to double back up that huge incline again going out to make my run any significant distance, so obviously I wasn't going to do that.

So I'm coming back, and when I get to the incline it's now downhill, so I got myself a breather. I ran to my car and got my water, but I didn't stop running, I kept jogging around the path there with my waterbottle - I never really do that, so this was a good opportunity to simulate getting water in a race. After I tossed my waterbottle I kept going, deciding that I could make loops around the soccerfield for a half hour instead of take that big hill again. And so at
1:11 I started the loop. When I finished I looked at my ipod - ah crap it didn't log that mile.... I had paused when I opened my car door, but when I unpaused running away from it, it just started playing music and never resumed the workout. I was too busy watering and jogging to notice. Crap. So I figured I took 6-8 minutes on that loop.

So feeling a little demoralized for a second I re-did the loop. Meanwhile a new soccer game had started. I'm not sure if the people were sick of me running circles around them, but I didn't care at that point :-) This time at the far end I noticed the soccer fields behind the park and decided to run into them. All I can say is that it was great. There was grass everywhere that was moderately flat. Perfect and huge areas, with an abandoned parking lot (well it was all locked up so no cars). So now my loop had grown quite large with this addition and I was feeling really good.

As you know my shin has been hurting. Many times on this run I would shooting pain that would last 2-3 seconds, then go away. I'd say that happened 6-8 times during my run. The grass was soft and perfect. But I was having a hard time. The hills had destroyed my legs. I could feel them burning with each step. The grass didn't help any. Firstly it's not entirely flat. There are divits and craters and sideways areas. Secondly it's grass, so you have to lift your knees higher, and my knees were NOT wanting to do that. So I struggled along, taking in the pain and just pushing and driving. I did another lap or two of this with dead legs, figuring that If I ended at 1:36 that would definitely be 12 miles, and considering the minutes that weren't counted that I would have reached my goal. So I dug deep and reached it and ran the rest of the way back to the car for the rest of my water.

Aerobically this wasn't a hard workout, there was one time on a hill coming back on middlebrook where I was breathing good, but the rest was really just fighting the tight burning pain in my quads and hams. Honestly I didn't think I would be able to go this far today. I mean really, this was like a hill workout AND a longrun put together in some sick torture training plan. All the same these hills are almost like the ones downtown. If I can do it here in 80 degree heat right now, I know I can do it there in March.

So this run was difficult, but definitely a confidence booster. I iced the shin again, which is becoming tradition, and I plan on getting some corework in tomorrow. I'm too tired to do anything else tonight.

3:45pm, ball camp, sunny 83 degrees 10 mph wind
1:38:22(+6 weren't logged = 1:44:00), bf 489