Back to 'The Hills'

No, I’m not writing about Kristin Cavallari or L.C. or even Heidi and Spencer’s wedding. Despite the unmistakably crystal-clear fact that I am what the kids call "with it," I will skip past discussion of any MTV reality shows and stick to my running. (But if any of y’all bee-otches out there wants to talk some Snoop Dogg’s Father Hood, I'm down with that shiz-nit.)

Anyway, when I woke up this morning, I wasn’t sure if I was going to run today. I’d been feeling an occasional weakness in my right knee, including when I tossed and turned during the night. So I thought I’d reschedule my run for Monday. But after a couple hours up and about around the house, I decided to hit the road. Part of this was so I could hopefully do a long run on Wednesday instead of Thursday (because, don’tcha know, I’m in demand on Thursday), but also I was just feeling good.

So I leave around 12:45, which happens to be smack-freakin’-dab in the heat of the day. But despite being just four days removed from my overly wussified performance on intervals, the fact is I’ve been running in brutal SoCal heat for most of the past two months. And for the 6 miles I ran today, it ended up being no problem.

I’m lucky enough to live in a very hilly area, and my regular course starts out with what I call “the loop.” It’s roughly 2.25 miles, and starts out downhill for ¾ mile, losing 220 feet. Then the next 1.25 miles are uphill, the first part at a 20% grade, gaining 260 feet. The last quarter-mile takes things back to where they started. So I do this twice, turning off at that last quarter-mile to add another 1½-mile out-and-back, which naturally involves more hills. All in all, this is about 700 feet of elevation gain and loss over 6 miles. (We’ll get more precise as soon as I get my early-birthday-present Garmin on the case.)

I made the first 2.25-mile lap in 18:21, an 8:09 pace. By the time I made it around to my turn, at 4.25 miles, I was at 36:23, a 9:07/mile split for that second lap. Yes, I knew I was moving slower. I finished the run with a time of 53:58, giving me a split time around 10:00 on the last 1.75 miles. I did lose 15-20 seconds as I encountered some red lights and waited for cross traffic, but it really didn’t seem I was going THAT slow those last couple miles. My estimates of the distances may be a little off (for example, I think “the loop” is actually about 2.2 miles), so who really knows. But I figured out that I can measure my progress on this route. If I can get my time down under 50 minutes on this route (48 would be better), then I’ll probably be making a big step forward on my marathon time.

After I was done, I learned the temperature was 88 degrees, which, again, hadn’t seemed to have overly affected me. By the end of the night, my right knee was sore again, along with some muscles. We’ll see how I feel the next few days, but for now, I’m planning to go back to a long run (13 miles) later this week before mixing in a healthy dose of mountain time into my training.

Easing back into it

You can only take so many days off after a marathon. The soreness everywhere below the waist (well, almost everywhere) had gone away in less than a week after the 2009 San Francisco Marathon (shamless SEO alert!), and as of Monday (eight days) I only had a tiny bit of tightness in my Achilleses-es.

I had to start training again -- if you can call it that -- sometime, and today was that day. Actutally, yesterday was that day, but, as a highly adaptive individual, I revised my plan based on new and timely information. (On the surface, this might share some characteristics with procrastination, but the trained eye can make the distinction fairly easily.)

So anywho, Wednesday started out much like Tuesday, with me weighed down by weariness (as opposed to wariness). Again adapting, I decided my intervals would have to wait until after the doctor's appointment I had scheduled. On the other hand, the high school track is literally across the street from my doctor's office, so there was no escaping this one.

This was my third time ever of running intervals. The first, I did 800s, three or four, between 3:30 and 4:00 each. The second occasion, which was about two weeks before San Francisco, I ran three 1,600s -- at 6:52, 7:15 and a very unpleasant 8:00. This time, I was looking for four 1,600-meter intervals, ideally all under 7:30.

I got two. Not just two at the speed I wanted. Two intervals. Then I quit, just like a quitting quitter quitting quittily.

It was approaching 90 degrees when I got on the track, but I was confident enough. I jogged a very slow 600 meters to warm up, then hit the ground running (ah, so clever). Halfway through the second lap, my lungs were getting a workout and the legs were fine. I kept going and clocked 6:56. Good start. After one rest lap, it was time for interval #2. Not even halfway through this one, I got the ol' back-of-the-diaphragm pain. But I still managed a 7:30. Then I walked my rest lap. It didn't help. About a 150 meters into interval #3, my whole body told me to stop, and I listened. Just another training failure. I guess I'm picking up my training where I left off.

Was it dehydration? The fatigue I've been feeling all week? A lack of caffeine? Excuses, all of them, but just you try to take them away from me!

Seriously, I've got to get better at intervals. As I'll write more about another day, speed is going to be my major focus before my next marathon. I can be a baby about it for a little wihle, but soon I'll have to grow up and be a man.

Gaa gah goo goo!

Coming soon: My training for San Francisco, also a race report