Summer 2011!

Internet, let me be clear. The title of this post does not come from the fact that it was the first week after my last final exam and thus the first week of my summer vacation for 2011. The title of this post is because it WAS Summer Vacation 2011. I did some math and figured out it would be cheaper for me to take 4 summer classes (two classes during each of the two summer sessions) and reduce my course load in Spring 2012 to two classes, which I could take through BU's "night school" and be billed at a discounted/part-time rate, which would save something along the lines of 12,000 dollars. The tradeoff is that I have 5 hours of class 4 days a week all summer, in addition my job, so I'm basically a "real person" in that I will be occupied about 9 hours a day, plus running, at least 5 and possibly 6 days a week. Since if I hadn't transferred I would have graduated this spring and been a "real person" anyway, I don't see it as a raw deal, since I've traded my vacation for ~12,000 fewer obligations to the federal government.

Anyway, my summer vacation was AWESOME. I ran a lot, slept a lot, ate whatever I wanted, still worked a few hours to mitigate my guilt over the money I spent, and visited Keene NH to revisit some of my favorite training runs (ok, and a few friends who still live there).

Here's what I got up to this week:

Monday 5/16: 11:30AM- River Loop from the house, solo, nice and easy. 2PM- Harpoon Brewery Sample-thing with the Ashford Family and Senor Joel. 7:30PM- Did Sean's Loop with Sean, then the same loop as earlier today, good for 9 or so. Cool and rainy, a little sore but not bad.

Tuesday 5/17: 2:30PM- 1mi at a cripply-yog, then right into 10 miles medium, 60:51. Felt kinda tired, misty and 50 deg out. Fresh Pond was muddy and I took a few bad steps, which made my left knee sore by the end. Quads heavy, but that's to be expected 9:30PM- To Harvard from the TTC, barefoot drills, 8 strides with jogback barefoot on the infield, back. Left knee pretty sore.

Wednesday 5/18: 3PM- 8mi on the River with James and the Dawwg. Same 50 deg and mist it's been for a while now. Pace check mile about 25min was 6:51, for reference. Left knee sore, tired overall. 9PM- 4mi river loop easy in a downpour, knee didn't hurt!

Thursday 5/19: 12:30PM- From the house to the Muddy River around JP once and back the Goody way, felt quite good today, didn't have the watch going but I was moving along at 6:00/mile or so most of the way. Knee didn't get sore til the last mile and even then it was very slight, so I think it's more or less licked. 9PM- 19' easy to Summit Avenue, 5x15 second all-out hill sprints with walk down recovery, 12' down. Not a knee pain in sight. Rainy out, though.

Friday 5/20: 11AM- 4 miles mit Herr Weider on ze River. 12:30PM- Travel to Fitchburg, MA on the commuter rail, then rode to Keene with Jeff's girlfriend, Eliza. 7PM- In Keene with Trethewey and George for the first bit. George came about 3, Geoff about 4. Hit two laps of Robin Hood Park, which was fun, then got to Keene State's gym and kind of decided to tempo an outnback 5miler like a mile into that section of the run- 6:23, 5:23, 5:03, 4:57, 5:00. The entire distance is legit/measured, but the middle three mile markers are approximate. The first/last mile is measured. I was frankly pretty surprised to be able to put together something like this- my last 4mi were in 20:23. 1mi easy back to Jeff's apt after the tempo. Apparently, my watch wasn't ready for this kind of effort either, because about 10 minutes after I got back from the run, I

Saturday 5/21: 10AM- Ran to the KSC gym with Geoff, did Yale 7 with Amy and Andrea, ran back to Geoff's place. As a sidebar, Amy had run 4:29 for 1500m the day before this run. We ran a loop that's at least a quarter-mile short in nearly 54 minutes. It was delightful. Amy and I used to do all our recovery runs together when I was at Keene, and it was downright nostalgic jogging through the trails again. Felt good, ran real easy. 7PM- From Geoff's place to Robin Hood park, 5 laps of Robin Hood, back. God, I love trails.

Sunday 5/22: 12:30PM- Two hours moderate (calling it 18 miles) in Keene, first 27' with Jeff, then the last 80min or so at 6:00-6:20 pace on mostly singletrack trails and railroad beds. For any Keenyans who are familiar with the area, I did a run through the railroad beds that bisect the golf course, into the woods on what Pete calls HS Ten, around the HS, through Wheelock Park, and back through the path by the Ashuelot River before adding on some miles on the KSC railroad beds. I was pretty miserable the last 30min or so, I was running too aggressively for sure. I felt more or less normal within an hour or two, though- amazing what a shower and a quart of chocolate milk can do.

Total- 101 miles

Have a good week, everyone! I'm going to bed.