Just Another Day in Studville...

DeMar Marathon Training Log: Training Starts. Again.

The first day of fully-committed training for the Clarence DeMar Marathon (well, the first fully-committed training day since mid-July, anyway) was an encouraging one. 

This was the first time in a while that I've woken up to sub-60 degree temp's and it was a huge help; I didn't have that sluggish feeling that I get in the warm weather which takes a few miles to shake off.  Instead, I was running pretty briskly right from the get-go. 

I went straight to the GHS track where I decided to test the tendons a little by comfortably pushing the pace for 8 laps.  I ended up averaging 6:24 per mile with no achilles problems and I didn't feel wiped out afterwards, all of which are great signs.  The total mileage for the morning was 9.1 and the overall average pace was a sharp 7:09.   

Hopefully the achilles won't flare up later in the day.  In any case, it was a promising start to a shortened marathon training program.  Fully committing to the race has had a nice psychological impact.  I feel fully engaged in training for the first time in a while and it feels great!

DeMar, Here I Come!

OK, it's time to get off the fence and make a final decision as to whether or not I'm going to tackle a marathon or not this fall.  So...for better or for worse...I've decided to go ahead and run the Clarence DeMar Marathon on September 27th.  And the time goal will be sub-3:15 (7:27 pace) for my 26th sub-3:15 marathon.

The sub-3:15 will be a rather subdued goal for me.  Heck, the original plan was to break 2:43 at DeMar!  But then the achilles tendon flared up and I pretty much gave up on any big racing efforts until 2010.  However, the last three weeks of training have been encouraging with weekly mileage totals of 70, 53 and then 64 this past week.  All of which was done with no achilles problems. 

So I decided that I can certainly run a decent marathon on that kind of mileage, but if I train for anything more ambitious than 3:15 I would probably risk triggering the achilles issue again and end up right back where I started.  Still, sub-3:15 ain't so bad.  Plus, it would qualify me for Boston '11 (I'm already good for Boston '10) and it would be marathon #31 for me, leaving me just 69 marathons short of my lifetime goal!

With about a month to go I have plenty of runway left to fit in maybe two 20-milers, but I probably won't try to do more than that.  I'll also try to hit a quota of at least 60 miles per week with little if any speed work.  That should get me where I need to be.  Then I'll toe the line with two sets of crossed fingers on the 29th!

The Countdown...

The town is buzzing as the kick-off for the Great Mileage Challenge, Round #3 is quickly approaching.  With only 6 days to go the South Side of town received two items of very sobering news.

First, the analysts took a look at the July mileage for the two teams and IF there was a mileage challenge in July (and the Scrappers are thanking their lucky stars that there wasn't) it would have been a good, old-fashioned slaughter as the Highlanders racked up a whopping 55 more miles than South Side; 332 to 277.  Suffice it to say that the Scrappers had an underwhelming pre-season.

And second, to the deep disappointment of his many fans, Sourdough has formally announced that he is "competing under protest" (a.k.a. CUP) for Round #3.  This means that although his mileage will still be tallied each day he doesn't give a hoot about the competition and he will not be putting forth any challenge-oriented effort.  It essentally means that he is a quasi-team member. 

So, a pathetic July performance coupled with Sourdough's CUP status makes one wonder if Apple Hill will reach the magic-number 16 wins in world record time.  Nonetheless, K-Law sounds (somewhat) optimistic.  He claims that if his achilles holds up he won't need a fully-engaged teammate to vanquish AH.  Yeah, well...who knows, right?

Meanwhile the Highlanders have announced that details for the September 30th ticker-tape victory parade through Apple Hill neighborhood will be released shortly.

Here We Go Again. Lord Help Us.

The summer of 2009 is essentially over.  That means it's time for school, soccer, the MLB playoffs and...of course...for better or for worse...Round #3 of the Great TS Mileage Challenge! 

That's right, the Apple Hill neighborhood's mighty Highlanders and the tough-as-nails Scrappers from the South Side of town are tanned, rested and ready to square off again.  The two teams have each won one round; the Scrappers owned May and the Highlanders stormed back to narrowly take June in controversial fashion before the summer break.

The scouting reports from the respective camps are not encouraging.  Round #2 apparently sucked most of the juice out of three of the four competitors.  In July, Sourdough ran almost exactly half of the mileage he ran in June.  Both J-Dog and K-Law spent the summer licking their achilles wounds that were inflicted in Rounds 1 and 2 which left their summer mileage in the toilet.  Meanwhile Coach grew a goatee, committed to running a 50-mile race in September and logged some irrationally long runs, the last one ending a bit shakily.  Quite frankly, the man's very lucky to be alive.

So the fans are a bit skeptical, but they're fired up for the kick-off on Tuesday.  The Rules Committee has decided to make only two changes to the format. 

First, in response to what is now being called Coach's "Magnificent Disappearing Act" near the end of June and all the ruckus that caused, all the competitors are now required to log their mileage online by midnight of each day.  However, Paragraph C(2) of Article III of the official rulebook states that exceptions will be made, but only for "damn good reasons".  I would imagine that it will take a few trips to the Courthouse before a half-decent legal definition of "damn good reason" will be settled on.

And the second change is cosmetic; the competition is now officially known as the "Great TS Mileage Challenge, Round #3" or GMCR3.  There's apparently no compelling reason for the name change.

Anyway, the competitors have exactly one week to get their acts together before the bell rings for Round #3!  May the best team of clinical masochists win!

Just About There? Maybe? Please?

I logged a very encouraging workout this morning.  I ran the 3.5-mile distance to the GHS track and proceeded to run laps and pushed the pace every-other lap, which is something I haven't done in quite a while!  Then I ran back home for a total of 10 miles.  And despite a few climbs and some pretty bad humidity (worst it's been all week, which is saying something) I managed to clock an average pace of 7:00 flat.  Again, something I haven't been able to do in a while.

So that was all well and good, but the real test was how the achilles would hold up for the rest of the day.  The way this tendonitis has been operating is that it feels fine during the workout (for the most part) but then flares up a couple hours later, especially after sitting still for a while.  But here we are, 6 hours after completing the workout and the achilles is feelin' pretty good.  So a nice way to end the week!

However...someone please tackle me, because now I'm itchin' to do a fall marathon which didn't seem practical just a couple of weeks ago.  The prospect of a fall season passing by without a marathon effort (the first such occurence for me in 13 years) has been killing me.  But the successful workout this morning, as well as a week or two of other promising workouts, has partially convinced me that a fall marathon is now a possibility.  An outside possibility perhaps, but a possibility nonetheless.

The problem is that if I train for and race a marathon the way I usually do then I'm nearly guaranteed to be right back where I started with the achilles.  So I'll have to consider doing a marathon with absolutely no competitive, PR-focused mindset whatsoever.  Just a get-to-the-finish line sort of thing.  I wouldn't be thrilled with the finishing time, but I do have my insane goal of 100 marathon finishes before I die (I'm currently at 30 at age 37) so at least it would be progress in that department. 

Ah well, something to meditate on...

10 Milers and Trails...

Well, it looks like I may have turned a corner with my achilles issue.  We had our annual family vacation in Wildwood, NJ this past week where I decided to test the tendon a bit, and I'm happy to announce that it passed with flying colors. 

I managed to cover 10 miles every morning for 7 straight days.  There are no hills in the Wildwood area of Jersey, but each run consisted of 5 miles of beach running, about 1.5 miles of boardwalk running and the rest was on paved bike paths and streets.  So the achilles received a sampling of three different surfaces each day amd it held up just fine.  The average pace ranged from 7:25 to 7:48.  The tendon still doesn't feel 100%, but it's quickly getting to that point.

The testing continued this morning as I hit the Meshomasic Forest with O'Toole, Sattler and Byram.  This was the first time that the achilles has encountered hills in quite a while.  But again, it held up fine for 8.8 miles at a sluggish but trail-appropriate pace of 10:10.  Once again, we got ourselves hopelessly lost in the forest.  But it wasn't nearly as bad as last time; we weren't forced to flag down any cars on Route 2 this time, I didn't have any terrific wipe-outs and Sattler only dropped a half-dozen f-bombs this time (in stark contrast to the last time we got lost). 

It was great to run with the the guys again.  We spent most of the run debating the building of cell phone towers in South G'Bury and enjoyed watching an amemic O'Toole acting like a goof ball, which was thoroughly amusing until he got us lost.  Unfortunately, the team has very underwhelming fall racing plans.  With the great exception of Byram tackling a mind-numbing 50-mile trail race next month, none of us have any racing ambitions until the Santa's Run in December.  Ah well!  That's what happens when you get old and injury-ridden; you focus on very long-range planning!

Race Report: Living Well Race Series, Race #3 (10K)

As the race started, one guy shot out to an early lead and he looked young, gifted and fast.  Not only that, but he had a permanent tatoo of a winged foot on the back of his left ankle.  That's bad news. 

Then I noticed that he had another tatoo.  This one was three words in huge letters on his back, stretching all the way from from one shoulder to the other.  So huge that despite the fact that his singlet was blocking much of the letters it was still very easy to read..."PAIN IS TEMPORARY".  That's when I turned to Kevin Ford, the eventual race winner and series champion, and announced that we were about to be creamed.

However, Ford and I managed to catch the tatoo guy by the one mile mark.  Then the three of us worked each other for the next couple of miles with each of us taking a few turns at the lead.  It was pretty exciting to share the lead with two other fiercely competitive runners as we continued to push each other.  

At the 5K turnaround I managed to build a very modest lead over Ford.  Then, after we completed the hairpin turn, we were surprised to find that the tatoo guy was well behind us.  The post-race rumor was that he was suffering from a cold, so although the pain triggered by the cold was temporary it would apparently hold long enough to keep him out of contention for the rest of the race.

It was a nice ego-booster to be in the lead for all of the out-going runners to see, but then Ford bursted my bubble by passing me at the 4-mile mark with a decent amount of authority.  I had decided ahead-of-time that I would not, under any circumstances, push myself up the steep hill at the 5.5-mile mark or launch my usual finishing kick.  My achilles was still on the mend and there was no sense in risking a setback with the fall racing season fast approaching.  That meant that I needed to have a decent lead heading into the hill in order to pull off a win.

Alas, I didn't.  Instead, Ford had me by 10 seconds at the bottom of the hill which meant that the race was his unless he faltered big-time.  Unfortunately for me, he faltered only small-time and nipped me at the finish by 5 seconds.

So the win eluded me, but I clocked a 36:13 which meant that I managed a 5:50 pace over a challenging 10K course on a bum achilles tendon.  So I'm mostly pleased, but it's a little disheartening to think back on the race and realize that I had a very decent chance to pulling off a win if I put in the usual 110% effort near the end.  Howver, I'm trying to keep the big picture in mind and save my achilles for a fall marathon, if that's still possible.