Sunday, July 25, 2010

Traffic: the Casanova Frankenstein to my Greg Kinnear

Hello, everyone (ok, hello mom). Unfortunately, I wasn't able to do the complete fitness test I had planned for the Blessing of the Fleet 10-miler. As it turns out, there is occasionally TRAFFIC in Providence at 5pm on a Friday. Last year, we drove a different way, and being 7 confident young men, we were sure we could make the 90min drive in two hours. How wrong we were. Our goals, as we languished on the highway, changed from "ok, we'll still have time to jog 15min, get our numbers, and get going," to "ok, we'll still have time to jog 10min and run the race, we can deal with the numbers after" to "ok, hopefully we get there before the gun goes off."

Ultimately, none of those things happened. We got there 13-14min after the gun sounded, and had to park about a mile away. We ran pretty hard over to the starting line, intending to just time ourselves over the course, when the race director told us to get our numbers, which contained our chips and determined overall finish. I asked if he was sure that the awards/final places were done on chip time and not gun time, and he assured me our times would reflect our late start. We pinned on numbers and off we went, only to find out the next day that most of us didn't end up in the results at all, and my "chip time" just happened to match up perfectly with my gun time. Hmmm. It proved impossible to race while weaving our way through the crowds of runners, so Peter and I settled on trying to run as close to 5:30/mile as we could. It was frustrating to waste the opportunity to crush one of my weaker PRs, but encouraging that I ran a very similar time to last year's blood-and-guts struggle with very little fuss. More on that later, though.

And now for something completely predictable. . . my log for the week!

Monday 7/19- 8mi easy with my younger brother, Kevin. Schedule said 10mi plus strides today, but my digestive system obeys no schedule but its own. Would the words "photo finish" be too descriptive here?

Tuesday 7/20- 11:30AM- 5mi easy from the house, pretty nice out. 7:30PM- 3+ up, 8x1min hills, 3+ down. My schedule called for 6x80 second hills, but Derry didn't have a good Heartbreak equivalent that I could find easily, so I figured 8x60 was close enough.

Wednesday 7/21- 7:30PM- 10mi on the river with James back in Allston, felt good.

Thursday 7/22- AM- Travel to Hanson, MA with James and Joey. 6:30PM- 7mi easy + strides in Hanson with Peter, Kevin, James, and Joey. We crashed at the Gilmores' place and got treated to a delicious pasta dinner by Peter's mom.

Friday 7/23- 12:30PM- 3mi shakeout with Peter and Trethewey, who had work last night and had to show up this morning. 6:00PM- 1mi pretty hard warmup to the car, stop for a second to put on our numbers, 10mi hard tempo. We went out as a group in 5:08, then ran into the back end of the pack of runners and realized racing the whole way was not going to happen. Peter and I ran together until 9.5mi, when he pounced on the chance to set a 10-mile PR (I would have done the same thing, make no mistake!). My splits, from what I could remember: 5:09, 10:38, 16:07, 21:33, 26:53, 32:30, 37:45, 43:??, 48:14, 53:38. It rained a little bit the whole way, thought it really got torrential around mile 7, which was our fastest mile. Going into this, I thought 52:30 was in the cards, and running a pretty comfy 53:38 confirmed 52:30 would have been a reasonable goal. Oh well, though- at least tempo-ing won't interrupt my training too much. 3mi c/d with Peter and Joey.

Saturday 7/24- 2PM- 4mi easy, solo, very hot out. 8PM- 8mi easy, mostly with Eric on the river, quads very, very sore- but more like I squatted lots of weights than racing sore. No broad, system-wide fatigue today- but for the quads, I was about as tired as I usually am after a 5mi tempo.

Sunday 7/25- 7PM- 11mi easy from the house, two laps around Fresh Pond. Felt pretty good, but again, very sore quads. Bruce told me to take tomorrow easy to ensure I'm fully recovered. I think that's a touch on the conservative side, but that's been the name of the game this summer. I'm healthy, fit, and fresh, so no complaints on my end!

Tot- 81mi

Final Results of the Flying Jackalope 10 Mile Time Trial:

Peter Gilmore: 53:30 (PR)
Yours Truly: 53:38
Joey Greenspun: 54:35 (debut)
Kevin Gilmore: 54:58 (debut)
GeoJeffrey Trethewey: 55:20 (debut)
David Krinjak: 57:29 (debut- also, Bruce told him not to race it, since Dave is more of a 400/800 runner)
James Weider: 50min (through 9, then he cooled down the last mile)

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