Please stop raining

My 4 days off have been less than productive.  Pretty much rained non stop.  Parts of the Ozarks are over 10" in the last 4 days.  Years past I would have loaded up & gone boating for 4 days.  Being a family man now that isnt really an option I'd use.  Plus add in the logistics of being a 1 car family.  Needless to say my boats still are covered in dust. No boating for me.

 I logged onto the Arkansas Canoe Club Forum to see what was happening & perhaps grab a ride.  After I figured out my username & password it told me I hadn't logged on since 11/24/2006.  Guess I'm a bit out of the loop.  Time to dust off my boating resume & find some people to boat with I guess.  If you read this & boat get a hold of me.  I'm rusty but have a few skills left.

I've kinda managed to dodge the rain & get in some runs.  I'd title this week of training as craptastic at best.  I ran home Sunday from work which wasn't too bad.  I was running with the knowledge that I had the 2012 F1 opener waiting for me on the DVR, which helped tons.  What was weird was my run time to work was exactly the same as my run time home.  Couldn't do that again if I tried.  Anyway run commuting was successful enough I plan on doing it some more.

Mon afternoon after I woke up went out as soon as I got up to try & stay ahead of the rain.  10 miles later I was dry but tired.  Kind of the beginning of the end of the week before it started.  Tuesday was a tempo run.  My normal tempo run is an out & back. Of course at the turn around it started raining. This did nothing for my motivation or speed.  Plus I had to wait for a damn train.  Not my slowest time but far from what it should have been.

Wednesday was supposed to be a 14 miler.  My legs were crap from the word go.  I almost bailed super early for 4 miles.  I kept my head in it & slogged out 10 miles.  The take away is 2 10 milers in 3 days.  Th e downsides are too many to mention.  The only real positive is that when I hit the driveway it started raining.  Which meant if I had kept at it for the whole 14 I would have had to run at least 4 miles in the rain.  If that happened how I was feeling would have meant a couple miles of walking. Which would have pretty much ate up the last of my moral for the week.

Today I woke up feeling all of my 90 years.  Hobbled around, zero motivation.  Amber went to the gym mid day so I had a reason too postpone running.  I managed to get my shit together enough to run 7 miles with 5x800m with 800m recovery.  Not the track workout I had wanted but still classified as my first "speed" workout of the year.

Watched Free Practice 1 on SpeedTv Streaming.  Not really much to learn besides McLaren is playing to Hamilton's ego setting him up for the fastest time over Vettel.  The Mercedes are fast & I'd be surprised if they didn't get a podium this week.  Bottas stepped in for a drive and out paced Maldando at Williams.  Saw that coming from a mile away.  Lotus is showing some pace.  Grojean was fast once again even with a wheel problem.  Sauber did their normal FP1. Don't be surprised with another double points scoring weekend; they are #3 in the constructors.  Ferrari is a big fat hmmmmm. HRT needs to throw in the helmet already.  I could drive my Volvo around the track faster.

transitional week

Yesterday was my first run in 10 days.  Without mincing words it sucked.  I lost a bunch of fitness being sick.  Plus I'm not 100% over it yet.  Still have an annoying cough.  Today though was 100000x better.  Was actually able to cruise with a  7:13avg.  Even dropped 2 miles under 7.

Instead of writing this week off I'm going to call it a transitional week.  No long run just runs to get back in the swing.  Then I'll make the next 3 weeks really hard.  Lots of Fartlek & long tempo runs.  I'll shoot for 3 maybe 4 key workouts per week. My average per mile pace has been steadily dropping.  Hopefully after this month it will be around 7:10 for most runs.

Tempo Run

I try and make one or two key workouts a week.  Right now those are my long runs & tempo runs.  Last night was a good one.  I do my tempo runs on an out & back U shaped course that runs west/east.  Yesterday with the wind blowing 20-25mph from the west it made things interesting.  I was still able to cruise to a 40:02.  That knocks 12 seconds of my previous best time.   I didn't get the best recovery having to go to work after & walk around in steel toes for 13 hours.

Weekend Update & Beginning of week commute

My chasing make up miles caught up to me Friday.  The wheels completely fell off.  Ran 8 miles & felt like crap the whole way.  Each mile was slower than the last.  I got up on Saturday & ran an easy 6 which seemed to help the legs get back to normal.  

Mia had a 4 day weekend so she went down to my parents house Thursday night with my dad.  Sat AM we met Mia & my mom half way so Alex could join them for the night so Amber & I could go to the Sertoma Chili cook-off.  Not really interested in the chili as much as the beer & Big Smith.  Their shows are starting to count down to the end.  We have tickets for the last show they’re having in May.  We wanted to go see them at Cartoons Saturday night after the cook off but the temptation to sleep more than 6 hours was too great.  

According to Sleep Bot I got 8.5 hrs.  Woke up feeling like a new man.  We planned to head to the lake to spend the night Sunday & bring the kids home.  Before we left I got out for a quick 14 miler.  By quick I mean quick.

Split	Time	Distance	Avg Pace
Summary	1:40:13.0	14.01	7:09
1	7:12.1	1.00	7:12
2	7:14.9	1.00	7:15
3	7:01.4	1.00	7:01
4	7:18.3	1.00	7:18
5	7:21.4	1.00	7:21
6	7:21.8	1.00	7:21
7	7:23.6	1.00	7:24
8	7:10.1	1.00	7:10
9	6:59.1	1.00	6:59
10	7:14.9	1.00	7:15
11	7:07.7	1.00	7:08
12	7:07.3	1.00	7:07
13	6:48.4	1.00	6:48
14	6:47.4	1.00	6:47

Not sure what got into me but ticked off the miles with an overall average of 7:09.  What was great is it didn't feel hard.  My January plan seems to be working.  Two more weeks in this cycle & I can start some speed work & perhaps see some real results.

My TT bike has made its way from hanging on the wall to the trainer in the spare room.  Maybe I can motivate to do some workouts on it.  Maybe...


I got super lucky & had a head wind to work last night & then a head wind home this AM. Plus I had to jump into traffic to get around this idiot. Once a month at least this company parks one of their trailers on the sidewalk.