Not with a Bang, but with a Fever

I guess I should apologize to T.S. Eliot for mangling some of "The Hollow Men" for the sake of a half-clever blog title. At least I didn't write a novel-length blog post replete with classical allusion, footnotes, and absolutely impenetrable meaning. On an unrelated-to-running note, I once got into huge trouble with an English teacher for suggesting that "The Waste Land" was actually intentionally impossible and actually meant nothing other than that ol' T.S. wanted to prank all the literary nerds who would spend hours and hours trying to decipher the poem. My other theory is that Eliot was secretly an engineer and wanted to punish all the worthless English majors by writing something so obtuse they would waste months on it.

Anyway. . . unfortunately, after feeling pretty damn invincible after my New England title and subsequent light workout on Tuesday, I woke up Wednesday with a pretty bad fever and what I suspect might be the beginnings of a sinus infection and/or the recurring bronchitis that has been my bane since my senior year of high school. I'll spare the bare summary of the week, mostly because it's depressing to write "off, fever" several days in a row. The long and short of it is that I ran 42 miles in 5 days this week, my fever broke about 4am on Thursday, and my cold has begun to settle into my chest, leaving me a little wheezy and short-winded even during easy runs. I'm not sure weather the wheeze is allergies or bronchitis. Since I'll be home in Derry for Monday and Tuesday, I might try to sneak in a visit to my doctor and get him to listen to my lungs. Ever since I had pneumonia my senior year of high school, my lungs have been particularly susceptible to bronchitis.

In terms of the upcoming outdoor season, I will be redshirting. Due to credit transfer from Keene and my enrollment in a dual degree program at BU, I have to stay at BU until the spring of 2012 anyway. Bruce and I figured we might as well spread my eligibility around a little. We're hoping to get this past XC season back with a medical appeal (since there was about a 3 week period where a cardiologist told me in no uncertain terms that my heart was no condition to run). Redshirting this outdoor season will allow me to save it for my 5th year of school and allow me to get back some much needed consistency and aerobic development.

One of the disadvantages to putting all this stuff out there is I run the risk of not letting my results speak for themselves. I said it many times I wanted to run 4:04 or better this season. I think, physically, I was reasonably close to that kind of shape. Unfortunately, I did not get a chance to do that- so it goes. In the end, I PR'd twice in the mile this year, by a combined total of .05 seconds. I lowered my 800 PR by .6 in a one-off relay run, which was nice. I do intend to race outdoors, just, obviously, not for the team.

Here are my goals for the upcoming season:

Process Goals:

1) Establish a consistent core/strength routine carried out 2x/week. This is an area I'm very weak in.

2) Carry out some easy range of motion type drills after my main run each day (skips, high knees, lunges, etc)

3)Stay healthy for an extended period of time by sleeping 8 hours per night and eating 2-3 helpings of vegetables every day (right now I average about 5-7 hours a night and probably 2-3 servings of vegetables every other day).

Performance Goals:

1) Work more on the aerobic side of things by increasing the quantity of my quality work (so, say 5-7 miles of aerobic quality per session instead of 3-4 miles with more intensity) while maintaining a sustainable level of volume.

2) Run a 5k that I consider to be roughly on par with my mile performances thus far.

3) Run one longer road race (8k+) at a higher competitive effort that I've managed to put out thus far.

I think that should be all for now, other than the necessary congratulations that are in order for two of my roommates. Ken Haltom ended his indoor campaign with a 4:09.93 mile in the IC4A prelims, his first sub-4:10 mile. More importantly, he ran an excellent tactical race and ran a strong third quarter- two things he has been working on lately. I think with his speed, the 1500 will hold great things for him outdoors. Second, Jeff Moreau, another resident of 15 Ashford, ran a .01 PR in the 800 in the final of IC4As with his 1:51.47. When I'm down for the count, watching my teammates and roommates excel is one of the few things that brings my spirit up. Since Ken and I were training for the same event, I got to hear all his thoughts about this race unfold over the week (well, until I got too fevery to run). I wish I had a tape recorder of Ken talking about how he wanted to run, because he excelled in every aspect he said he needed to improve. I wish things had gone according to plan for me, too- but I'm glad it worked out for SOMEONE!

I'm on spring break now, which means no student teaching this week, which means I'm going to sleep like I'm gettin' paid for it. Goodnight, internet!