ROLLING WEEK = 42 M |
SEASON MILES = 1346 |
Day |
Round Up |
Miles |
| Week 31 06-19 - 06-26 | Pretty bad week, because of how the race went. The build up to Sunday went according to plan, I kept things easy and felt good on my two tune up sessions. Thought I'd feel good on the line for the 10k and be able to get under 32 minutes. Given how other guys ran, I think 32:30 would have been a good race on that day, but I was a minute off of that time. Disappointing to get to the race you'd been building up to and not be focused. I really didn't run well and should have fought a lot harder. I'm going to take some time off now, I've been feeling a bit run down and think a break would do me good. June Miles : 193 | 52 |
| SUN | BAA 10k, 33:28 for 34th. Walked over to the Common this morning and didn't have much time after putting my stuff down to head out for a warm up. Ran out on Commonwealth and met a large pack of BAA guys around Exeter. Turned around and ran back with them and had plenty of time to stretch out before the start of the race. Was able to run some strides before the gun and felt good on the line. Got out well, through the mile in 5:06 and then just went backwards. Was aggressive in places during the race, but for the most part was just trying to get along. The clock at 5k said 16:23, the official split was 16:29, and I had a good stretch from there back to the BU Bridge as I chased down Matt Carter and the third place woman Misiker Demissie. But once I caught them I was unable to hold it and they quickly passed me back and pulled away. Was caught by Heather Cappello right after 5M and had to really work to hang with her. She had built a gap by the 6M mark but I found some speed after turning onto Charles St and was able to put 4 seconds on her. Really disappointed in how I ran today, completely unfocused and unwilling to hang in when things got hard. Cooled down with the BAA guys along the river, splitting off to head home at the Museum of Science. About a 3M cooldown, completely wiped out when I got home, really shuffling the last few blocks.
| 11 |
| SAT | Charlestown Loop. Another short, early run this morning, this time to get it out of the way before Nate's birthday party. Kept it nice and easy the whole way, but not terribly focused on tomorrow's race. Had a long day with the party and didn't eat very well, unsure of how tomorrow will go. | 4 |
| FRI | Charlestown Loop with Midge. Earlier than normal start, Nate was sleeping in but I was still up at 5:30am. Nice and easy this morning, still resting up for Sunday. Finished up with 5 hill sprints at the Monument and a stride down Prospect Street. | 4 |
| THU | Back Bay, with a mile at MIT in 6:07 via 100m on/100m off. Legs were dead again this morning, hopefully the 8x100m strides will get them jump started. Cool and slightly raining this morning, got right into the on/offs when I got to the track. Didn't check any 100m splits, but came through 800 in about 2:56 and then clearly started slowing on the "off" parts. Felt good on all the "on" parts, maybe ran a bit too hard on some of them. Wound up being 61 minutes, so 55 without the mile on the track which means the distance to/from the track bumps the loop from 6M to 7M. | 8 |
| WED | Navy Yard with Midge, then Longfellow. Pretty tired again this morning, just dead legs again. Hard to get through this run, but not as bad as last Friday. Almost nothing happened during this run. | 6 |
| TUE | 1600-2x800-4x400 in 5:11; 2:30, 2:30; 72, 71, 71, 67. Warmed up over to MIT this morning, felt a bit tired and unfocused on the way over, not a great sign. Got to the track as Harvey, DSmith, JMark and Colman were finishing up a workout, so I got to chat for a minute before getting started with mine. Wanted something manageable with some work at faster than 10k pace this morning, goal was 5:10-2:30s-74s. I probably should have run a few more strides, I didn't feel really loose until the 400s when I started running at a faster pace. Split something like 78-2:37-2:53-5:11 on the 1600 (technically 5:10.99,) clearly wasn't focused on the workout until the second lap in 79 got my attention. Took 400m rest (2:45) and got into the 8s. Running 2:30 pace felt pretty comfortable, got out in 75 on both but hit 1:33 and 1:34 at 600 so had to work a little over the final 200m to hit the time. Took 200m rest after each 800 (1:37 and 1:44.) By this point, my right hip and hip flexor were bothering me, especially at the very start of intervals when I was accelerating. I went into the 4s wanting to negative split them, thinking that 38-36 would be good. Got out in 37-high on the first one and closed with a 34-high. The next two were faster, getting out in 36-high and closing with 34-lows. Felt really good on those, my hip didn't bother me as much and I felt completely under control. Wanted to run the final one harder and forget about negative splitting, got out in 34-low and managed to speed up a bit on the second half. I took 100m rest between the 400s, which was around 60s each time. Really happy with how the workout went, a great confidence boost and I'm sure I didn't put myself in a hole going into the weekend. I knew this would be an easy workout going in and was struggling to stay focused the whole time. The clearest example was at the end of the 3rd 400. I had somehow gotten a song stuck in my head at the start of the 400s. That's not unusual, but it was "Sailing to Philadelphia" which wasn't exactly helpful. With 100m left in the 3rd 400, the song reminded me of "Coming to America" and I briefly thought the song was "Sailing to America" and started wondering why I couldn't have gotten a better "______ America" song stuck in my head. Following that non sequitur I had a horrible mash up of "Sailing to Philadelphia" and "Living in America" in my head for the fourth interval. Definitely not locked in this morning. | 9 |
| MON | Day off. Very tired when I woke up and I felt bad when walking Midge, so the took the day off. I've been feeling run down and unmotivated recently, so hopefully a day away from running will help. | 0 |
| SUN | Fake New Ollie (or, Murphy's Law Extended.) Got to sleep in this morning, because it was Father's Day. Was pretty hungry when I woke up, but headed out the door to get the run over with. Legs were pretty sore and I ran slowly the entire way. Ran the usual route to Murphy's Law and headed up to Broadway, then Broadway down to the ocean. Ran out on the boardwalk a bit, then turned around and took the access road to First Street. When I got to First Street I saw a guy dressed up like a clown driving a car, which always freaks me out. I'm sure that 99% of the time it's just a clown, but my gut reaction is always "That's a serial killer." Uneventful the rest of the way, finished up right at 80 minutes. | 10 |
Day |
Round Up |
Miles |
| Week 30 06-12 - 06-18 | My mileage has been coming down as I get closer to the BAA 10k, but the quality hasn't suffered. Had a good run on Sunday, would have liked to be closer to the win and in retrospect I had a bad plan, but I ran hard the whole way, even when it was clear I couldn't catch Narcisi. It took two days to recover from that race, but I put in a great workout on Wednesday. A little surprised at what I was able to do, but having other guys there to work with really helped me along. Finished the week off with easy mileage and a low-key workout on Saturday. One more week until the 10k, really looking foward to seeing what I'm capable of. June Miles : 141 | 57 |
| SAT | 8-8-16-8 in 2:32, 2:32, 5:10, 2:28. Warmed up over to the river via MGH this morning, and had to take a short detour due to the thousands of people already lining up for the Bruins' parade. Ran a few strides and stretched a bit, but got into it pretty quickly. The plan was to hit 2:30-32 on the 8s and 5:10 for the mile, with 800m rest between everything. Ran out and back from the 4.5 to the 6.5. Was worried I started out slowly, so was nicely surprised to see the first 800 right at 2:32. Kept the rest honest but wasn't trying to run too hard, and hit 3:30. Pretty much the same on the second half, though I was more confident in my pace after seeing 2:32 on the first. Hit another 2:32 and focused on recovering well to get ready for the mile. Backed off a little for the mile but not too much, coming through in 2:34. After seeing that split thought that I could run 5:06, but didn't put any more effort in and wound up slowing on the second half. Just thinking about running faster didn't get it done. The final rest was a bit slower, 3:50, I got a great start and felt very strong at the end past the baseball diamonds. Very happy with how this morning went, though it would have been nice to run a bit faster on the mile. I hit all my goals, but given how I felt this morning probably should have aimed a bit higher. Wasn't sure what to try this morning, the upside for a good workout isn't that great but the downside is huge, this close to the 10k. Running too hard would put myself in a hole that I'm not fit enough to climb out of, much like how I didn't feel completely recovered from Rhody when racing Bunker Hill. I wanted to get in some work at just faster than race pace, which I did and it felt comfortable enough to increase my confidence for next weekend, and I got enough rest between intervals that I felt recovered throughout. Cooled down just 2M back home, this time avoiding North Station. | 8 |
| FRI | Navy Yard with Midge, then Longfellow. Totally wiped out when I woke up this morning, maybe just eating an Anna's burrito wasn't enough to recover from last night's run. Almost didn't get out the door, really didn't want to run, but somehow managed. Nearly cut the run at 2M when dropping off Midge, but forced myself back out the door. Really didn't enjoy any of the run, my legs were completely shot. Had a few good seconds on the bridge while distracted by the view, but that was it. | 6 |
| THU | Lincoln with Ely. The edict from Coach Shea was "only go 13M if you feel great." Given how I felt at work yesterday and waking up this morning I decided early on to only go 10M this afternoon. Didn't feel terrible, a little fatigued in general but my legs weren't as shot as I was expecting. Matt and I kept it easy today, covering the usual route in just 80 minutes. | 10 |
| WED | 5x1600 in 5:13-5:10-5:09-5:06-4:57. Warmed up over to MIT this morning and met JMark, Will, Alex Taylor and Hari Iyer for this morning's workout. The plan was 5x1600 starting at 5:12 and dropping 2 seconds per mile from there, plateauing at 5:06-5:08 if it's really hard otherwise running the final 800 of the final 1600 as the fastest 800 of the day. Had plenty of time to stretch out and use the bathroom before the 7:45am start. Will and Alex ran 2k for the first, third and fifth, so JMark, Hari and I stood around for 400m then jumped in for the last 1600m of their first 2k. Felt a little rough early on, the pace was really easy but I wasn't as focused on the workout as normal. Came through halfway in 2:34, a bit quick, with Will in the lead. There was some confusion as to pace, so Will and Alex pulled away as I led Hari and Jmark for the second half. Slowed a bit too much to compensate, 3:54 at 1200m and then I held back on the last lap as Jmark and Hari picked it up a bit. I screwed up the watch at the start of the second mile so I was running blind, but it felt pretty even with Alex in front and though it got a bit hard I felt good and Will had 5:10 on the watch when we crossed the line. Jared led the third one, taking us out on pace in 77 but then kept speeding up and we went through 800m in 2:31. I pulled way back on the reins when I saw that split and finished up in the back of the pack (with 5:09.00 on the watch.) At this point I was a little frustrated with how things were going and wished I'd been able to control the pacing and work on speeding up on my own. I didn't feel any real change in effort, I just followed the guy ahead of me and the times more or less worked themselves out. That's good for moving through the workout but at the same time I like to feel like I'm in control of what my legs are doing during a workout, instead of just being along for the ride. Led the fourth mile and split it pretty evenly, with Hari on my hip the whole way. Felt my legs starting to tire here, I still felt under control but it was an effort to keep going at 5:06 pace. Not sure how much of that was the feel of Hari working really hard next to me. Terry had been watching our workout and gave Will and Alex a plan to hammer their last 2k, but I was just hoping to run something like 2:32-2:29 to finish up. I led through 300m on 76 pace, then swung wide since Will and Alex were going to run 74.5 on their second lap (they actually ran 71.x!) Jared went with them and I got back on the rail in fourth, coming through at 76. It started getting harder to hold on and after coming through in 2:32 Hari went around me and I started to fade mentally. Lucky to have Terry there yelling at me, though, and managed to keep Hari close and pass a fading Jmark on the third lap. Don't fully remember the 1200m split but I think it was around 3:46. With 300m to go I was able to find a good gear and got locked in mentally, then caught Hari before the curve. Didn't have a lot of finishing speed and both Hari and JMark kicked past over the final 75m. Completely shocked to see 4:57 on the watch, meaning 2:25ish for the final 800. Took a long time to regroup and I was still a bit wobbly as we left the track to cooldown on the river. Ran straight down the river and back home, with company from JMark and Terry down to the Sonesta. Wiped out when I got home, but couldn't be happier with this workout. Ran good times the whole way, getting faster with every mile and closed incredibly hard. Aside from a bad 200m in the last mile I was mentally tough the whole workout. The first 4.5M felt like last Wednesday, I was capable of hitting the times it was just a matter of keeping my legs going. The final 800, though, was that red-lining, running as hard as you can feeling. Another good workout, and happy that we could get a group together this morning. | 11 |
| TUE | Navy Yard with Midge, Docks-Greenway. Almost talked myself out of running first thing, but managed to get my butt out the door. Usual route (and pit stops) with Midge, then dropped her off and headed out along the Harbor. Had a steady, light rain most of the way and was pretty wet by the end of the run. Felt great today, tempted to run fast with Midge and kept the pace honest the whole way. Pretty incredible how much better I felt today compared to yesteray. | 8 |
| MON | Longfellow. I was completely wiped out this morning, despite managing to fit in a 90 minute nap yesterday. Couldn't bring myself to get out the door first thing, so I started work and managed to get out the door at 11:30am. Felt horrible from step one and improved to half-decent by the end. Kind of surprised at how bad my legs felt, I didn't think I had run that hard yesterday. Glad I managed to get something in, the schedule for today and tomorrow is "8-10M one day and very easy the other day." Today was obviously the "very easy" day. | 4 |
| SUN | Bunker Hill 8k, 25:54 for 2nd. Headed over to register about 8:30 this morning and started warming up just after 9am. Ran over to Medford to check out the location of the 4 mile mark and finished up through the projects and up Chelsea. Always nice to be able to stretch out and use the bathroom at home, especially since it was raining off and on this morning. Saw Narcisi on the line at the start, luckily I was expecting to see him and prepared for a race. Got off the line okay and settled in behind Eric. Backed off a bit before the hill, following the plan, but wasn't able to close the gap on the downhill. Needed to open up my stride a bit more, I guess, but I never got back to Eric and he pulled away from me over the second half of the race. Looking back, I shouldn't have let him gap me as much as he did on the hill, but I was afraid of working too hard too early. Cooled down about 3M through the streets of Charlestown. Disappointed I wasn't able to make it a closer race, Eric got me by almost 20 seconds today, but I would have needed to run as fast as I did last year to stay with him. I've got some more work to do.
| 10 |
Day |
Round Up |
Miles |
| Week 29 06-05 - 06-11 | An okay week, with a curveball thrown in at the end. Had a decent race on Sunday to start things off, but couldn't finish it off after getting out in 10:00 through 2M. Recovered well enough from the race and a 12M run on Monday for a good workout on Wednesday. Really happy with how the workout went, moved smoothly from 2:50 down to 2:30 on the tempo portion and then managed to run 4x800 at just under 2:30. Had to head out to Chicago the next day, though, which threw off the week a bit. Glad I was able to get out there, there are times when running can take a backseat to real life. June Miles : 84 | 56 |
| SAT | Charlestown Loop with Midge. Ran around 12:30 this afternoon during another showing. Headed out in the cool rain with the dog and felt decent. Was pretty tired when I woke up this morning but didn't feel it much during the run. Finished up with 5 hill sprints at the Monument, but my usual corner was roped off so I had to use the opposite corner. Looking forward to tomorrow's race. | 4 |
| FRI | Day off. Long day on Thursday, woke up at 5:30am EDT and went to bed at 1:30am CDT. Up at 7:30 this morning to head to the funeral, drove back to Milwaukee in time for a quick dinner then flew back to Boston, landing at 11pm. | 0 |
| THU | Olmsted via Fens/Riverway. The plan for today was supposed to be 13M at Lincoln if I felt decent and 10M if I felt bad. But I'm heading to Chicago later today for a funeral, so I had to adjust and ran solo this morning. Started out feeling average and ended up feeling pretty good, definitely didn't feel yesterday's workout in my legs. A really nice first 30 minutes then the rain started picking up around Landmark Center and heard a little bit of thunder. It never rained too hard, though, and the rain cleared up altogether by the end. Was 47:30 out to the turnaround at Olmsted and 46:36 on the way back. Next two days will be very easy. | 12 |
| WED | 2.5M-4x800 in 13:25 (via 2:51-2:45-2:41-2:36-2:31); 2:28-29-29-30. Warmed up over to MIT at 7am this morning and this time the track was open. Pretty warm already, the sun was beating down with no cloud cover. I don't know why they took the bubbler out from the track, but it would have been useful today. Felt okay, not great, on the warm up and my legs were a bit heavy on strides before the start. The plan for this morning was a 2.5M tempo, starting at 2:50-2:55 and dropping 5 seconds per half mile from there. Managed to hit the bottom of the window the whole way, which was great. Started out very comfortably, got out a bit too quick to start but adjusted from there. Stepping down to 2:45 and 2:40 went really well, ran a bit too fast for the first 200m and then settled into a comfortable pace. Surprised at how easy this went, given the difficulty I had speeding up past 5:30 pace on the progression a few weeks ago. After the first 3 800s my legs were feeling a bit heavy, but I didn't feel like I couldn't hit the times. The 2:36 and 2:31 felt about the same effort wise, and much easier than 5:00 pace has felt recently. I didn't feel like I was pushing myself much, it was more a matter of keeping my dead legs moving. Had 800m rest that was supposed to take 4:00, after 90 seconds for the first 200m I had to move with a little more purpose for the next 600m. Had about 4:30 rest in the end and went right into the 800 repeats. The plan was to run the first three at 2:30 or faster and the final 800 as 30 seconds FAST and 30 seconds moderate. (The difference between "FAST" and "fast" is unclear. Maybe I was supposed to be yelling as I ran?) Got out a bit too fast, came through in 35-high, but then adjusted and split 73/2:28. Had 3:00 rest which was nearly 400m and almost too long. Felt good at the start of the second, got out in 36ish and split 74/2:29. More of the same on the third, although I had to close with a 36 to get under 2:30. (Interestingly, the watch says 2:29.28 for both intervals.) Got in 3x30s FAST on the final 800 and finished the third a step or two before the line, and started that effort a few steps after 600m. Probably ran the 30s moderate sections too slowly, I still have a "shut it down" mindset after a hard 30 seconds. Really happy with how today went, put in a lot of work at 5:00 pace and didn't feel over my head at any point. Hard to describe how today's effort felt. Most workouts, at least most hard workouts, I have a good rhythm going and have to push to run at max effort, and sustaining that is what makes it hard. It's going to the well and pushing beyond what you think you can do. That's how the mile repeats in 5:12-13 felt a few weeks ago, I was struggling to hold on. I never got into a groove today and the difficulty of the workout was in just keeping myself going. The times were well within my abilities (which was honestly a surprise) but my legs were more or less dead. By the end there was a general fatigue and I was worn out, but I wasn't having problems standing. Hard to put into words, but a very different feel for today's workout. Here's a last shot at it: the end of the workout felt a lot like having just pushed through a long run after being tired at mile 1. I was really surprised when the workout was over; it went by quicker than I had expected and I didn't have that zombie feeling. Cooled down back home, wasn't wiped out when I finished and certainly didn't feel like I had just worked out. | 11 |
| TUE | Navy Yard with Midge, Docks-Greenway. Felt a lot better this morning, but kept the pace easy the whole way. Usual route with Midge to start off, then over the bridge and along the harbor. Great weather this morning, another sunny day with few clouds and great views of the harbor. Not much to say, just a basic, standard run this morning. Happy to feel better than I did yesterday. | 8 |
| MON | Navy Yard with Midge, Fake Fresh backwards. Wanted to get in some kind of a post race long run this morning, and was really dragging the whole way. Put in 2M with Midge on the usual route through the Navy Yard, then dropped her off and headed out to run Fake Fresh. My quads were pretty tired this morning, all I wanted to do was to get through the run this morning. Pretty slow the whole way, but was surprised to see a 7:15 on the watch from 2.5 to 3.5 at the end. | 12 |
| SUN | Rhody 5k, 15:44 for 22nd. Didn't want to warm up alone, so went earlier than usual and 3M with Ely, Hari Iyer and Will, bumping into other guys along the way. Felt good on the warm up and had plenty of time after the Port-A-John to stretch out and run strides. Got off the line cleanly and built into the first mile, coming through at 5:00 and catching a decent sized pack right at the mile. Put a lot of focus and effort into the second mile, running another 5:00 but this time uphill, and then started to unravel over the third mile. Really lost it mentally when we were behind the casino and completely stopped moving up. Was passed by a few guys before finally digging in with 600m to go. Didn't catch anyone at the end, but at least stopped the bleeding. Disappointed to get through 2M in 10:00 and then follow it up with just a 5:12. Will finished in 15:34 and I should have been able to stick with him over the last mile. Cooled down a long 3M, mostly with Will, while watching the women's race, then had to head straight home. Came into the race really focused on running a good second mile. I did that but then let down mentally and that's disappointing. Being optimistic, though, this was another step in the right direction and running just as fast on the uphill second mile as on the flast first mile took a lot of effort (as a datapoint, Ely was 10s slower on his second mile.) I felt fully rested and don't think that Thursday's workout was affecting me at all, I just wasn't tough enough at the end. Interestingly, I ran 15:44 here last year, but that day was much hotter and on a different course.
| 9 |
Day |
Round Up |
Miles |
| Week 28 05-29 - 06-04 | Not a spectacular week, but another solid chunk of training, this time without taking a single day off. The mileage wasn't great because of resting up for Rhody, but put in an okay long run with 2 workouts this week. Tuesday didn't go very well, wasn't mentally tough enough and couldn't shift gears once the pace was supposed to pick up. Thursday went well, but would have been better had I been able to get on the track. The goal for this week was to put in solid training at the expense, possibly, of feeling good for Rhody. This was the first week of following Terry's plan, and I found myself much more confident approaching his workouts than the ones I'd dream up the night before. I was able to just run and not worry about whether I was doing the right type of workout at the right distance and at the right pace. Things are laid out from here to the 10k, so I should have a good month of training. June Miles : 28 | 58 |
| SAT | Charlestown Loop with Midge. Back to the pre-race routine, an easy 4M around Charlestown at 7am. Midge was into the run and never dragging, which was nice, and would have dusted me on the stride down Prospect if I hadn't been holding the leash. My legs felt good, livelier than yesterday. Kept it easy up Sackville but did 5 hill sprints at the Monument at the end. Looking forward to tomorrow. | 4 |
| FRI | Back Bay-South End. Purposefully kept it very easy this morning, had to speed up a couple of times to make lights, but that was it. The usual route down Comm Ave then Hereford-Dalton-Belvidere to the South End. Took the Orange Line over to a random side street and followed that to Tremont, then over the Mass Pike and into Bay Village. Felt like cutting it short, so I took Charles to the Common and followed the Freedom Trail to Haymarket, then the usual way home over the locks. Easy run, legs didn't feel great but I chalk that up to forcing the easy pace. Sometimes when you make yourself run slower than your legs want to, you just feel bad. 54 minutes for the 7+M route. | 7 |
| THU | 3x~2000m on the river. The plan today was 2-3x2000m, alternating 200s of 35 and 45s for the first 1600m and then a 400m in 70 to finish. Warmed up over to MIT as usual, only to find the track locked when I got there, presumably for commencement stuff. It had occurred to me last night that this might happen, but forgot to look into this morning and had no alternative track options since I'd already run 3M to get to MIT. Went over to the river with the plan of running 30s on, 30s off for a mile and then a hard 70s past the mile mark. Stretched out a bit and got into, but after 15 seconds I realized that my fancy watch would let me set up the timer to go 35s, then 45s and then repeat. So I stopped and set up the watch, then started the workout for a second time. Felt like I was running the 35s sections fast and was really trying to keep the effort honest on the 45s sections. My instinct was to treat those as rest, when really I needed to be running 6:00 pace. Came through the half right on pace at 2:40 but slowed down on the second half and missed the mile by 7s. I started the 70s "400" at 5:20 instead of at the mile, thinking that would make it easier to figure out on the watch, and ran hard all the way down to the turnaround by the Royal Sonesta. Jogged back to the 3.5 easy and then got started on the second one. Tried to get after it a bit more, but I probably ran too fast on the 35s sections and didn't speed up enough on the 45s parts. Was 5s slow at the half and 10s behind at the mile. Ran the "400" out onto the Mass Ave bridge, making it all the way to the 170 Smoots To Go mark. [A little math: 1 Smoot is 5 feet 7 inches, I covered 194.4 Smoots (+/- 1 ear.) I ran for 70 seconds, it took 10s to get to the 2.5 mark. If it took 0s to get to the bridge then I was running 73s pace (for a 440) on the bridge (361.8 yards in 60 seconds). If it took 2s to get to the bridge, then I was running 70s pace (for a 440) on the bridge (361.8 yards in 58 seconds).] Felt good enough during the second one to try the third and got out really well. Probably was running the 45s parts too quickly, though, and came through 800 7 seconds fast. Gave all that time back on the second half, though, most of it on the final 45 seconds going slowly to the 3.5 mark. Made it 5-7 seconds past where I stopped on the first 2k, so was running roughly the same speed as the first one. Just headed straight home on the cool down, a little short of 2M but the warm up was more than 3M so it all works out. Felt good this morning and thought I improvised well without the track being available. I was looking forward to working on changing gears and feeling smooth at different paces, but this was more of a straight fartlek effort of running hard for 35s and backing off for 45s. Without the feedback of 200m splits on the track I wasn't able to do more than guess. Maybe Terry will get the wheel out again and mark up the river loop with hashes every 200m. Didn't feel wiped out after this one, should leave me feeling good for Rhody on Sunday. | 9 |
| WED | Navy Yard with Midge, then Docks-Greenway. Kept things easy today, usual route with the dog and then a nice run along the Harbor. Pretty nice weather this morning. Nothing really happened, just taking it easy between two workouts. | 8 |
| TUE | 5M progression in 6:01, 5:50, 5:46, 5:37. 5:27, 800m in 2:35 via 30s hard, 30s moderate. First real workout of the official Terrance P. Shea training plan. Warmed up 2M over to the 4.5M mark via MGH and then stretched out and ran a few strides before getting into it. The plan was 6-550-540-530-520-X, where X would be 5:10-5:20 but only if I hit 5:20 on the fifth and still felt good. Got off to a great start, wanted to stay relaxed and comfortable over the first 3 miles and ran dead-on splits for the first 2.5 miles. A little surprised at how well I was finding the pace, was dropping the 10s per mile very easily. Lost the handle a bit on the lonely stretch after BU, split that mile 2:51/2:55, then turned around and started hammering away at 5:30 pace. Came through the half in just 2:49, though, and then really had to start working. Only managed a 2:48 for the next half and by then it was pretty clear the sixth mile wouldn't happen. Tried to really lay into the final mile and felt like I was doing a good job. Came through the half a bit slow, though, 2:43 and then was just trying to get to the end. My legs weren't terribly tired or heavy, I was just unable to really push myself and may have gotten lulled into a bad mindset by how easy the early miles felt. Finished the 5M progression with just a 2:44 half. Took 800m jog rest, very easy, then launched into the 800m of 30s/30s. The goal was to run 2:30, with 3 fast intervals, which would really require a decent pace on the 2 moderate intervals. Felt good on all three hard intervals and probably would have been a few seconds faster if I didn't have to dodge some geese by the baseball diamonds at the end. Cooled down with an easy 2M back home. Another botched progression run, despite a good start I wasn't able to speed up as the run wore on. I think there's a combination of reasons for this, the two most prominent are: 1) I'm simply not in good enough shape to really run well at the end of five miles (though problems started after just 3M today) and 2) because the early miles are at a more relaxed pace (and I'm usually hyper-conscious of keeping it relaxed) when the pace finally starts dropping out of the relaxed range I'm not able to make the switch and even though I'm trying to run harder, I'm not able to hang in there mentally once it really starts hurting. That's my best guess at why I was able to run repeats at 5:12-13 but couldn't run a single 5:20 today. May Miles : 254 | 10 |
| MON | Navy Yard with Midge, then Cambridge-Prospect. Dead tired this morning, very glad I didn't stick with my original plan of working out this morning. Did the usual 2M loop with the dog, dropped her off at home then over the locks and up to Cambridge Street. Ran across Longfellow and through Kendall, taking Broadway all the way up to Prospect Street. A short jog over on Prospect to the other Cambridge Street, then back home the standard way. Really dragging this morning, 48:00 for the 6+M of that loop. | 8 |
| SUN | Seaport-Downtown-River with Nate. Kathryn was running the Run to Remember this morning, so I headed out with Nate in the jogger to spectate. Started about 10 minutes after the race, headed out parallel to the course into downtown, then cut through the Common and down Commonwealth to Mass Ave. Picked up the course along the river and ran up river until we saw Kathryn just after River Street. Turned around and ran down to Longfellow, then along Charles and through Downtown Crossing, mostly with Kathryn. Knowing that the finish area would be too crowded to navigate with the stroller, I ran "fast" from Post Office Square to the overpass above the finish at the World Trade Center via Summer. Getting better at running with the jogger, I was able to true up the front wheel so it stopped pulling right and keeping it under control was much easier. Ran a 4:00 half from the 'x' to BU and then a 3:45 from the 2.5 to the 3, trying to catch back up to Kathryn. | 12 |
Day |
Round Up |
Miles |
| Week 27 05-22 - 05-28 | Wound up running a bit too long on Sunday by mistake and that left me worn down on Monday and Tuesday. Without any good workout ideas or much motivation on Wednesday I just went out and hammered for a few miles, then put in some decent mileage at Lincoln on Thursday. Attempted a workout on Friday but couldn't get anything going and was just overheating and my legs were dead. Didn't feel like this was that great of a week, but somehow managed to put in 59M in 6 runs. I guess a 16M and a 13M run really add up. May Miles : 224 | 59 |
| SAT | Fells with Midge. Headed over to the Fells with Midge at 8am this morning, but as I was merging onto 93 I realized I'd forgotten to bring my watch. Checked the clock when we started and just had to run by feel. Started out on the Blue Trail, then worked my way over to Bear Hill and came back along the reservoirs. Really didn't know what to expect when we got back to the car, it could have been anywhere from 40 to 75 minutes and I wouldn't have been surprised. Turned out to be 57 minutes and I didn't feel like trying to add on any more. Legs felt pretty tired today, but yesterday didn't wipe me out nearly as much as I had feared. | 7 |
| FRI | 3xBunker Hill in 1:57-1:50, 1:54-1:50, 1:52-1:47. Decided I was too tired when waking up this morning to try a workout and waited until just after noon to do this one. Of course, by then it was 85 degrees and really humid so I felt completely terrible the whole way. Warmed up through the Navy Yard, then started at Green Street and ran over and back on Bunker Hill three times. The assignment was to run until I ran one slower than the first, but I started out so slowly that I had no choice but to get faster. Was really struggling with the heat at the end and threw in the towel after the third climb. Cooled down with just 1M back home then sat out on the deck and sweated for awhile. No-win situation today, still tired from Lincoln in the morning and too hot later in the day. Should have just put in a standard run. | 6 |
| THU | Lincoln. Met Harvey, Ely and Alex Taylor at 5:30 for this run. Standard Lincoln run, started out real slow and progressed to less slow. Matt got things started off with a story about ticks, mice and deer, and things only got more exciting from there. Felt pretty good the whole way tonight. | 13 |
| WED | Fake Fresh backwards, uptempo in 66:30. Despite a day off I was relatively tired when I woke up this morning and also didn't have any good ideas for workouts, so I did an uptempo effort similar to the one two weeks ago. Easy jog over to Mass Ave in 20 minutes and then ran the rest of the way at a faster than normal pace, without killing myself to keep it hard. Wasn't very excited about it at the start, my legs were really heavy and was having second thoughts after just two minutes. Thankfully my legs came around a little bit and although I didn't feel great the rest of the way I found a good enough rhythm. Lost the handle on it a bit from JFK through River and Western, but got it back on the way to BU. Split 3:07 to BU and felt like I held it there to Mass Ave, though that's a pretty long stretch. Covered the mile from 2.5 to 3.5 in 6:09, splitting it 3:03/3:06, which didn't feel much faster than I'd been running. Kept running hard into Charlestown and up Green Street, then took it easy the last few blocks. Hard to guess at overall pace, but a wide range of 6:00-6:30 certainly covers it. Ran about 50 seconds faster than I did two weeks ago. | 10 |
| TUE | Day off. Wasn't terribly excited about running today and tired when I woke up. Wasn't plastered to the bed tired, but felt rundown. Might have been a good decision to rest, my right hip was really aching when I walked Midge this morning. | 0 |
| MON | Navy Yard with Midge, Inman Square. Usual 2M route with Midge, then dropped her off at home. Normally feel bad about putting her straight into the crate after a run, I wouldn't want to be locked up, but it was cold and raining this morning, so I'm sure lying down with a peanut butter and jerky treat was preferable to heading back out into the rain like I did. Didn't listen to my own advice, either, and wore a shirt which naturally was plastered to my body and useless after 10 minutes. Once I accepted the rain, though, the run wasn't so bad. Standard easy mileage run and my legs weren't that great this morning, definitely feeling the effects of the weekend. | 7 |
| SUN | Navy Yard with Midge, Davis-Bike Path. Got started around 8am this morning with the usual 2M route with Midge. Felt good with her, then dropped her off and headed out towards Davis along Highland. Kept it easy early on, just running at whatever pace my legs found naturally. Kind of bored without much to think about, but somehow got through it. Had to take a pit stop at Russell Field, but other than that things went smoothly. Got to the river at JFK and started heading home. Was operating under the assumption that this loop was 13M, but it turns out the shortened loop, coming back down Mass Ave, was 13M. I realized this at the 7.5M mark, about 5M from home when the watch was at 68-69 minutes. Not much I could do about it other than soldier on. Didn't check the watch very much on this run, but I was 7:14 from the 7 to the 6 and that was quicker than I was expecting. Took the Fielder footbridge over to Beacon and the usual route home from there. 1:45 on the watch by the end, and that doesn't include the 15 minutes or so with Midge at the start. Long run, lots of time on my feet, and I was feeling it the rest of the day. A good way to start off the week, though. | 16 |
Day |
Round Up |
Miles |
| Week 26 05-15 - 05-21 | Not a great mileage total for the week, but 45M in 5 runs isn't terrible. Would have been better had I run Sunday and Monday, but I bounced back well the rest of the week. Had a great fartlek effort on Wednesday, felt like I was able to push myself really well, though I did fade a bit on the second half. Got out for my first ever run with the baby jogger and that went pretty well. Finished the week off with a great workout on Saturday, especially given that my legs were tired from the warmup onward and I never felt good. Looked back through my log and that's definitely the best workout I've run since Nate was born. Very excited to see how things turn out in June. May Miles : 165 | 45 |
| SAT | (4x1600)-800-400-400 in 5:13-5:12-5:12-5:13-2:31-73-70. Warmed up over to MIT at 8am this morning after about 9 hours of sleep and an hour and a half of playing with Nate. Wanted to run mile repeats but was unsure about pacing, so came up with a nice twist for the workout. The plan was 5xmile, but if any mile was slower than the first, I'd run a broken down mile (8-4-4) and the workout would be over. Felt really tired on the warm up, my quads were pretty sore, I assume from pushing the stroller yesterday. Didn't do much stretching and only two strides at the track, just wanted to get started. Tried to run the first one at an honest effort, running extra slow to ensure I got through the workout would defeat the purpose, but I didn't want to kill myself on the first one, either. Got out in 38 but then slowed to 79 at 400. Sped up a little from there and was 3:56 at 1200m. I remember thinking that another 79 would give me 5:15 and that would be a good first mile, so I was really surprised to look at the watch and see I closed with a 77 to run 5:13. A little nervous about the rest of the workout, but got focused on the 400m rest and was ready to clip off 78s and run a 5:12. Got out right on pace in 78 but then completely lost focus on the second lap and came through in 2:40. Started worrying that I'd wind up cutting the workout way too short, but managed to put those thoughts out of my head and ran really, really well on the second half. I was 3:56ish at 1200 but wasn't sure I'd be able to sustain that pace. Very happy to see 5:12 on the watch at the end. My legs were really tired at the start of the third interval and went out in just 2:39. The downside of having the escape hatch built into the workout was that I started thinking that running slowly on the third mile wouldn't be terrible. I managed to focus in, though, and closed with a 2:33 to hit another 5:12. Again, that was unexpected as it didn't feel like I was running that much harder or any faster. Dead tired to start the fourth but by that point I knew I was going to run the full workout, even if the fourth mile was slow I'd run the broken down mile on the fifth. Got out slowly but built into it and found a good groove, out in 79 and then strung together three straight 78s to run a 5:13. That meant I should have finished with a fifth mile but decided that I'd get more out of running the broken down mile, as I was really doubting my ability to run a fifth strong mile. Got out in 74 high and was really trying to get under 2:30 but wasn't able to keep it going on the second lap. A little disappointed to run a 2:32 and 2:33 as the second 800 of miles and then only manage a 2:31. Was really feeling bad at this point and came close to skipping the 400s, not only because I was developing stomach issues. Talked myself into doing what I was supposed to do and got out pretty well, 35 high at 200 but then ran a terrible curve, completely lost focus and hit 300m in 55. Refocused on the 100m rest before the final interval, got out in 35 and stayed focus through the line. Thought I had a shot at 69, but it wound up being a very solid 70. Really wiped out after this workout, the 3M jog back home was pretty rough. Very excited about how this one went, would not have thought I'd be able to string together four miles like that. Having the firm cutoff established and having it be as fast as it was really helped. It started out as just a fun twist, but it made me really competitive during the workout, I probably wouldn't have come back from the 82s lap on the second mile if it weren't so important to get under 5:13. Starting to think I might be close to getting into halfway decent shape. (I think I qualified that statement enough.) Decently wiped out when I got home, though I managed to get in a 90 minute nap in the afternoon when Nate went down. | 11 |
| FRI | River with Dan and Nate. Wanted to give Kathryn the afternoon off, so started work early this morning and headed out for a run with Nate in the stroller at 3:45 this afternoon. Ran over to the river with Kathryn, it took awhile to get used to pushing the stroller (my first run with it) and my arms were already getting tired on the bridge out of Charlestown. Met Dan by Longfellow and headed up the river to Western (Kathryn turned off at Mass Ave.) Felt like we were going slower than normal and I'm sure Dan was getting annoyed that the stroller kept drifting right. (I'm pretty sure the front wheel isn't true.) By the time we crossed the river I felt like I had gotten the hang of the stroller. My legs were pretty tired by the time we got to Mass Ave, and I remarked to Dan that this would be the hardest 8 mile, 8 minute pace run of my life. Had to work on keeping my shoulders relaxed by the end as my arms and upper back were getting pretty sore and tired from fighting with the stroller. Don't think I'd want to push Nate every day, but I can see doing it every once in awhile, especially if it's a choice between not running and pushing the stroller. It's going to take a few more runs before I take it off the river though, the mile through Charlestown was pretty tough. I'm accustomed to carrying my watch in my hand, but that's obviously not possible with the stroller. Had my watch on my wrist but kept forgetting to stop/start it and was hard to work the watch with my hands on the stroller anyways. Screwed it up and have no idea how long I was out there. | 9 |
| THU | Navy Yard with Midge, then Longfellow. The standard 2M loop through the Navy Yard with Midge, making the usual pit stops along the way. Headed out on my own for just the short Longfellow after dropping Midge off at home. Ran over to Cambridge St, down the hill and across the bridge then back home along the river. Was tempted to extend the run through Kendall, but had to keep it short and get to work on the early side this morning. Felt good, not too sore from yesterday. | 6 |
| WED | 6M fartlek in 34:17. Warmed up over to the 4.5 mark via MGH this morning and got right into an old-school fartlek. Wanted a workout where I was running hard and not terribly concerned about the watch. Had a couple ground rules for the workout, but they all boiled down to "don't slack." Wanted to keep the "rest" pace between pick ups at 6:00 pace, which certainly didn't happen but forced me to continually push the rest. Wanted to run pick ups of varying distances, which obviously would lead to different paces. Finally, wanted to define pick ups as running to various landmarks and not cut any of them short. Went through the first half mile in 2:53 with just a single pick up (from Longfellow to the marble slab that says "chill") and then made a point of not looking at the watch until the halfway point. Put in one longer pick up, from Mass Ave through the 6.5M mark, the rest were 400-600m with a few shorter ones. Got to the turn around in 16:49 (5:35 pace) which was really surprising but very encouraging. Took a couple of long rests after the turn around, though, and came through the first half mile in 3:00 (didn't look at the watch again.) Set up a longer pick up from the footbridge after BU to the 6.5M mark and then more or less stuck to shorter pick ups the rest of the way. I didn't count the number of pickups I ran during the workout, but the best I can remember I ran 9 on the way out and 10 on the way back. A bit slower on the way back, 17:28, I'd guess both because I was tired and also because I took a few longer rests. Averaged 5:43 over the entire 6M stretch, which was much better than I was shooting for (and I ran 34:30 during Saturday's 6M progression.) Took a minute or two to catch my breath and then jogged the 2M back home, very slowly. Happy with how things went this morning, got exactly the effort I was hoping for and managed to run hard and push myself without worrying about the watch. | 10 |
| TUE | Navy Yard with Midge, then Run to Remember course. Kathryn is staying home with Nate today, so I was able to get started before 6:30am. Did 2M with Midge through the Navy Yard, dropped her off at home and then ran around downtown on my own. Felt pretty good today, it felt like Midge and I were running fast and it took a bit for my legs to adjust to running slower on my own. The upside of two days off is that I'm nice and recovered from last week's 65M. Nothing special on the Run to Remember course, though I did see a Maserati at State and Atlantic, which meant that I had Joe Walsh in my head for the last 2M of the run. | 9 |
| MON | Day off. Felt better this morning, not 100% but could have run. Wasn't excited about mid-40s and rain, though, so thought I'd wait until later in the day. Turned out to be a good thing I started work early, because I wound up taking Nate to the doctor for about 2 hours in the middle of the day. By the time I finished working it was after 6pm and I hadn't eaten lunch. I really didn't want to miss back to back days, but there was no way around it today. | 0 |
| SUN | Day off. Was absolutely wiped out when I woke up this morning, it was really hard to get out of bed. At first I thought I was just tired from yesterday's workout, but Nate and Kathryn are both sick and my stomach started bothering me as soon as I stood up. Had very little energy early on, was sitting down every 10 minutes to rest. Felt better as the day wore on, but never good enough to get out the door. | 0 |
Day |
Round Up |
Miles |
| Week 25 05-08 - 05-14 | Aside from a day off on Tuesday, this week went pretty well. Had a good run on the Pachaug trails with Brian and JMark to start off the week and my shortest run this week was 9M. Had a good "up tempo" run, solo, on Wednesday, running between 6:00 and 6:30 for 40 minutes. For me, the big run of the week was Friday. Not a fast run or a long run, but I managed to get myself through a run of decent mileage despite being pretty tired in the morning. I think I was still feeling the Wednesday-Thursday combo during Saturday's workout, even though my legs felt better as the run wore on. 65M in 6 days is a big step up in mileage, so it makes sense that I'd be feeling a bit rundown. But this is why I've opted not to race through the rest of May, I can dig myself into a bit of a hole and won't feel like I need to rest up. May Miles : 120 | 65 |
| SAT | 6M progression in 6:04-6:03-5:43-5:45-5:31-5:24. Had originally wanted to treat this somewhat like a race, in that I'd wake up and take some time before heading out for the run. But we had a full day planned and I hit the snooze button too many times, so I was out of bed at 6:15 and out the door by 6:40 this morning. Felt pretty bad on the warm up past MGH to the 4.5M mark on the river. Took a few minutes of plyometrics but got right into it without the standard warm up, and notably without any strides. The goal was to run 6:00-6:00-5:40-5:40-5:20-5:20 and was planning on using the first mile to get loosened up. Felt good by the time I got to the half mile, I was expecting to see something around 3:05 but it was actually 3:00. Lost a little focus on the next half, trying to keep things easy, and was slow at the mile. The second mile went the same way, out on pace at 3:00 and then slow on the second half. The next half mile took me to the BU Bridge in 2:51, but finished with another slow half mile. Dealing with the death bridge, plus the long boring straight along Storrow really tested my focus. Turned around and got right back into it, but had another slow half, 2:54 at the 7. I did manage to hit 2:51 on the second half of the fourth mile, despite trying to deal with the trauma of seeing a squirrel head and tail without a body in the middle of the path. Felt like I found a good rhythm at 5:40 pace, trying to run hard while still feeling like I could pick it up one more time on the 5:20s. Started to hammer at the start of the fifth mile, but that stretch back to the Storrow overpass is interminable and I wasn't running as hard or as focused as I needed. Hit the half in 2:45 and really tried to pick it up after seeing that. Felt like I managed to speed up and was definitely running hard, but was only 5:31 at the mile. Really wanted to finish the workout well and kept hammering but it took me awhile to feel like I was doing better. Got on a bit of a roll before the Hatch Shell, came through the half in 2:44 and then really got rolling on the final half. Didn't feel like I was running that much faster but I closed well and hit 5:24 for the final mile. Not nearly as tired at the end of the workout as I should have been and not terribly happy with how the workout went. On the cooldown back home, though, I started to feel not quite as bad about the workout. I was remembering how bad I felt before the workout and even though it didn't go well I managed to get through a workout on tired legs when I wasn't feeling on top of my game. | 10 |
| FRI | Davis Square. Predictably tired this morning, just 12 hours after last night's run ended. Fought off early desire to skip the run altogether and got out the door just before 7am. Really worn down on the climb up Bunker Hill, just 5 minutes into the run, but fought off temptation to cut it short and just run Inman. Took the usual route on on Highland and picked up the bike path at Cedar. Got to Davis and headed back home via Elm to Prospect to Cambridge. I originally was planning on taking Broadway over Longfellow, but my compromise this morning was to just take Cambridge to MoS. Felt tired and terrible the whole way, not a very enjoyable run but I got through it. Glad to have forced myself through a run of decent mileage despite feeling bad. 69:30 for a little over nine miles. | 9 |
| THU | Lincoln with Ely. Met Matt early and were on the trails before 5:15 this evening. I felt alright on the run, a little tired but we kept it easy and had a good conversation the whole way. Ran the 13M route but I took a wrong turn at some point. Was expecting to loop back around but that didn't happen and we wound up on the fire road then worked our way back to Walden Pond and took the 10M route back to the cars. Finished up in 1:42, maybe a little longer than 13M but that'll compensate for Sunday. | 13 |
| WED | Fresh Pond backwards. Had originally thought about some type of tempo effort today, but was too tired when I woke up to seriously consider it. Felt better when I started running though, and once I got to Mass Ave (20 mins in,) I picked it up and ran faster than normal the rest of the way. Not a workout effort, I wasn't forcing the pace, but I made sure to not let the pace lag and start jogging. A bit farlek-y as I'd find a rhythm for a few blocks and then need to speed up or slow down to make a light or avoid pedestrians. Felt good once I got to the river and really enjoyed running faster. Saw a 3:05 from the 'x' to BU and then a 6:18 from 2.5 to 3.5, though I had lost a bit of focus on that mile. Kept the effort up into Charlestown and ran hard up Green Street, then jogged the last few minutes home. Ran the entire loop in 67:26 this morning, not a full fledged workout and probably a normal run for some guys, but it was nice to mix things up instead of just slogging through more miles. My legs certainly felt the effort when I finished. | 10 |
| TUE | Day off. A combination of things conspired against me today. Stayed out late at Meadhall last night with friends, had stuff at work that needed to get done and was planning on ending work early to visit with friends again tonight. No run in the AM in order to start work early and no run in the PM as I was out until 9. Given how tired I was yesterday, a day off isn't a terrible thing. | 0 |
| MON | River with Harvey and the criminal mastermind Dan Smith. Met the guys at Mass and Memorial around 7:15 and we headed down the river to Science then I went all the way back up to Mass Ave before turning back on my own. Pretty tired and worn down this morning, and we kept the pace relaxed the whole way. The few splits I checked were in the 7:40 range. Took the Fielder footbridge over to Beacon on the way back and finished up past North Station and over the locks. 72 minutes this morning, so maybe a bit long of 9M but I need to compensate for Sunday. | 9 |
| SUN | Pachaug State Forest with JMark and Harvey. Slept about 4.5 hours after a late night at Foxwoods and we were on the road to Pachaug by 7:30 this morning. Started the run just after 8am and ran a mix of dirt roads and single-track trails for 1:41. Ran with Brian the whole way and JMark went the first hour-plus. Only had a few areas where we were hiking, but we weren't running all that fast until the final 15 minutes or so when Brian and I picked it up on the main road. Was tired on the drive out, but my legs felt surprisingly good from the beginning and I had good energy the entire way. We almost certainly didn't cover 14M, but it was a fourteen mile effort this morning. Got in the car and drove straight back to Boston, so I wound up eating for the first time at 1pm. Not my smartest move ever. "Doubled" today with a fair amount of walking around with Kathryn and Nate to enjoy Mother's Day. | 14 |
Day |
Round Up |
Miles |
| Week 24 05-01 - 05-07 | Managed to get two sub-par races and 1 very good workout in this week. Would have liked to run much better at James Joyce, but wasn't focused or strong enough over the final few miles to finish it well. Had a good string of runs mid-week, including a great workout with Harvey on Wednesday. Running 9x800 at low 5:00 pace was very encouraging and got my hopes up for a good race on Saturday. I still think I could have run 15:3x, but it would have taken a lot of focus and a willingness to really go to the well, and I didn't go into the race with that mindset. Finishing off the week with a sub-16:00 race isn't terrible, though. May Miles : 55 | 55 |
| SAT | Mill Pond 5k, 15:51 for 4th. Warmed up 2M with Jared and Brian "Local Hero" Harvey, then had plenty of time to stretch out and run strides before the start. Harvey took off from the gun, Jared and I more or less ran together in the early going but I allowed myself to be gapped at some point during the first mile. Slowly lost touch and slipped into fourth, then wasn't ever able to mount a charge. Didn't get a good rhythm going and still not able to force a hard pace when I'm not feeling good. Legs were a bit heavy, possibly left over from Wednesday or just the "higher" mileage this week (3 straight double digit days.) Was hoping to run close to 15:30 but only managed a 15:51 today, disappointed in that but not going to beat myself up over a low key race. Cooled down 8 mins with Jared while Harvey did an extra workout, then another 6-7 minutes with Jared and Brian before awards. Drove over to Foxwoods afterwards and had a good time.
| 7 |
| FRI | Docks-Greenway. Nice and easy this morning, resting up slightly before tomorrow's race. Felt good enough during the run, but didn't run any hill sprints at the Monument afterwards. | 6 |
| THU | BAA 10k course with Harvey. Headed out to meet Harvey on the river this morning, thought I'd left early, but he left even earlier and we met by the Sailing Pavillion. Decided to run the BAA 10k course, so crossed over Longfellow and headed down Charles. Ran out on Comm Ave and Bay State, then cut up to Comm at the end of Bay State and headed back home on Commonwealth, cutting off part of the course. Ran straight through the Public Garden and the Common, all the way back to Causeway with Brian who turned off to get to the river. Was feeling absolutely terribly at the very beginning, it seemed like everything hurt and/or was tight from yesterday. Eventually loosened up and got into a good groove with Harvey. Finished up in 69 minutes, but online the route measures out to 10+ miles, so I'm assuming I messed up the watch at some point. Felt like I was running my customary (of late) 7:30 pace, but didn't check on the river and Brian wasn't wearing his gizmo. | 10 |
| WED | 3x3x800 in 2:35-2:32-2:29; 2:35-3:10(1k)-2:28; 2:31-2:30-2:29. Warmed up over to MIT at 6:45 this morning and took met Harvey for the workout starting at 7:30am. Brian was running 3x3200m broken up as 800-400-800-400-800, essentially 800s at pace with 400m "surges," so I ran the 800s with him and rested during his 67s quarters. Because of the distance he was running, we took 800m rest between sets, which was pretty luxurious. I led the first 800 and got out quickly over the first 100m as I was unsure of how the pace should feel. First lap was 76 high and we hit 600m in 2:55. Surprised at how easy 2:35 felt, which got me excited for the rest of the workout. Tucked in behind Brian on the second 800 and he brought us around right on pace the whole way. Running 2:32 was very comfortable as well, felt great jumping into the final 800 of the first set. Started out hard to be able to get ahead of Brian as he finished his 400, and did a decent job of running even splits. Brian didn't want to speed up on the second set, which was understandable, so I decided to run 1k on the middle interval, then jump in for the final 600m of Brian's final 800 and finish up with 200m on my own. I led the first one and running 2:35 was very easy again. I led the second one, too, since I wouldn't be there to lead off the final 800, and we came through in 2:32 or 2:33, then I did my best to stay positive and aggressive as Brian accelerated and pulled away. Was feeling the extra distance in my legs as I jumped in behind Brian to start the final mile. He had run a slow first 200m and started speeding up, so I came through in 73high and just tried to stay close to Brian and not fade too badly on the solo 200. Brian wanted to run faster on the final set, so I went back to running just 800s so that I could really focus on running sub-2:32 on all of them. I led the first and second, running hard the whole way but felt really great. Brian said he'd lead the final 800 but after 100m I could feel he was tiring and we were going into the wind on the backstretch. I moved next to him to try and get him going, but felt so good that I just kept going and went into the lead. Was worried I got a little carried away as it felt like I gapped Brian, but I'm sure that didn't actually happen. Hit 400m in 74 and started tying up slightly. Brian went back around at 500m and but 2s on me over the final 300m. I was working hard but didn't get up on my toes and was pressing a little too much. Really spent at the end of this one, but a great workout. Couldn't have done this without having Brian there, having him behind me kept me from slowing down when it got hard. Ran 4.5M averaging 2:31, which was much better than I could have predicted. Felt pretty rough on the cooldown back home, but just really exicted about how things went today. | 11 |
| TUE | Fens-Riverway with Harvey. Met Harvey on the river by MIT and took Mass Ave to the Fens. Followed the Fens and Riverway out to Huntington where we turned around. Took Park Street to Beacon on the way back, and took Beacon all the way home. Harvey turned off at the Fielder footbridge and I ran solo up to the State House, past North Station, etc. Felt really good, though having Harvey there for conversation meant I didn't think much about how I felt. Good run, great weather, a lot of fun. | 11 |
| MON | Day off. Had an early meeting at work and was worried the timing wouldn't work if I spent an hour running in the morning. Left knee hurt while walking around in the office, so that's not good. | 0 |
| SUN | James Joyce, 33:39 for 35th. Warmed up out and back to the mile mark with Carly and Midge, had to pay a lot of attention to make sure Midge didn't trip Carly. Kathryn and Nate were there to spectate and Kathryn got stuck in a long line at a Port-A-John while I was stretching, and I didn't have enough time to hit the head myself because of the long lines. Found a secluded spot and thought I'd be okay, but had stomach issues about 4.5M into the race. Got out fast but spent a lot of time slowing down and going backwards. No splits available, when there were clocks at mile marks they were clearly too fast (3:52 at 1M, 9:12 at 2M, I think 31:20 at 6M.) Not the kind of effort I wanted today, I felt good enough through 4M but then couldn't push the way I needed to over the final 2M. Cooled down an easy 2M with Matt Ely and Matt Carter, my legs were sore but I wasn't terribly worn out. 10k is probably beyond the limits of what I can race well right now, but I still think I could have run about 20s faster today.
| 10 |
Day |
Round Up |
Miles |
| Week 23 04-24 - 04-30 | Not a great week of training, but finished on a good note. Had a rough workout on Sunday to start off the week. Probably went in with goal times that were a little too aggressive but managed to finish it off with 2 solid miles. Had a better workout on Wednesday, running 1k repeats at 10k pace, very comfortable and in control the whole way. It was a "leave something in the tank" workout and that's exactly the way it felt. Hopefully I feel that good on Sunday at James Joyce. April Miles : 224 | 50 |
| SAT | CTown with Midge. This Saturday mid-day run has been leaving me feeling good on Sundays, so I'll keep it going. Felt fine, nothing special, and finished with 5 hill "sprints" at the Monument. April Miles : 224 | 4 |
| FRI | Fake Fresh backwards, partly with Bedoya. Was originally thinking I'd run hard for a section along the river, but felt so incredibly terrible at the start that I quickly disregarded that plan. Kept it slow and steady and was lucky to bump into Bedoya at JFK. He joined me for the trip down the river, which made the run a lot more enjoyable. Finished up solo through Charlestown, felt bad the whole way. | 10 |
| THU | Back Bay-South End. Wasn't very excited about running this morning, but the idea of exploring the South End got me out the door. Took the usual route down Commonwealth, then Hereford-Belvidere-Newton into the South End. Wanted to avoid running on Tremont or Columbus, so I took Warren to Berkeley and then into Bay Village. Saw them getting ready to film a movie just on the other side of the Pike, but didn't recognize anyone. For some reason I wanted to run past the W Hotel, so I headed up to Stuart, hung a right and followed Stuart all the way to South Station, where I picked up the Greenway. Pretty fun run, felt good enough and was glad I got out the door. | 7 |
| WED | 5x1k, 200 in 3:21-22-21-17-17, 31. Warmed up over to MIT this morning for a workout at goal 10k pace (33:20/5:20). Temps in the low 50s with a nice mist in the air, but I was sweating by the time I got to the track and was comfortable running the entire workout shirtless. Didn't do much stretching and only a few strides before getting right into the workout. The plan was to run 80s for the first 3, and only speed up on the final two if the first three were incredibly easy. Wanted to avoid trying to coast the whole way, and after how hard 5:25s were on Sunday I was worried I'd have to get out pretty hard. Came through in 38s feeling very comfortable, then slowed to 79 at 400, hit 2:40 at the half and maintained through the finish. Took an easy 200m jog rest back to the start (1:15), then tried to find that same groove on the second interval. Out in 39-80 but slowed and hit 2:42 at 800 and had to pick it up over the final 200m. Same story on the third, out in 39, through in 80 but relaxed even more and was 2:43 before picking it up to close in 38. Decided I was overreacting to seeing a fast first 200 and to compensate I wouldn't look at the 200m split on the fourth. At 250m decided I'd run the entire interval on feel and didn't look at the watch at all. Worried I'd be slow and was very surprised to see 2:17 on the watch. Decided to do the same thing on the final interval, didn't look at the watch and hit 2:17 again, though I worked a little harder on the final 400 because I felt like I'd been taking it too easy. Tried to put myself in the middle of the race on Sunday and not run harder than I'd want to surge in the middle of a 10k. Probably ran a bit harder than that, but certainly didn't go crazy. Took about 100m rest then launched into a 200m to finish things up, need to keep my kick sharp in case Jeff Caron decides to race James Joyce. Felt great, really fast but was still surprised to see 31 on the watch. Cooled down another 3M back home, including a hard effort up Green Street. Really happy with how the workout went, I was shooting for a workout that would leave something in the tank. Definitely achieved that, felt great at 5:20 pace and more confident about running that pace on Sunday. | 10 |
| TUE | River with Harvey. Harvey was going a bit shorter, so he waited to start and we met just after the BU Bridge, instead of down by MIT. Ran down to Mass Ave, crossed the river and headed back up towards BU. I turned off at the 6.5M mark, ran down to Fielder and then the usual Beacon-North Station route home. Finished up at 71 minutes and the route measures out to 9.5M, should have stuck with Brian for another minute or two. Felt good this morning, running pretty easily at 7:20-7:30 pace. Rounding down for good karma. | 9 |
| MON | Day off. Tired and lazy this morning. | 0 |
| SUN | 4M progression-2x1M in 6:13-5:43-5:37-5:26, 5:26, 5:25. The plan for this morning was a 4M tempo in 5:50-5:40-5:30-5:20, then if I was feeling good I'd extend it to a 6M tempo, but if I was working hard just to hit 5:20 I'd finish up with 2x1M. Really warm this morning and smartly decided to run without a shirt. Warmed up over to the 4.5 mile mark and did a little stretching but more or less jumped right into the workout. Wanted to err on the side of too slow at the start, but went too far in that direction and hit 3:09 at the first half. Was a little too relaxed, thinking I'd be able to coast to a 5:50, so tried to pick it up but only managed a 3:04 on the next half. Still wasn't terribly focused and tried to stay positive, thinking a slow start would mean I'd be feeling better at the end. Did a better job on the second mile, just slightly off pace, then hit 2:47 to start off the 3rd mile. Slowed going under BU and wasn't able to get it back, managing just a 2:50 for the second half of that mile. Turned around and tried to hammer the fourth mile, knowing that I'd be cutting the progression at four miles. Came through in 2:42 and was happy with that given that the wooden bridge slows things down. Wasn't able to maintain, though, and slowed a bit at the end. Took 2:00 rest and refocused before the final two miles. Felt good at the start of the mile, though it didn't feel like I was running that fast I came through in 2:40. Really surrised to see that split, but slowed afterwards and only ran 5:46 for the full mile. Was getting very warm at this point and spent most of the 2:00 rest debating jumping into the lagoon to cool off. Got out well again, running 2:41 but again was unable to maintain that pace and slowed over the second half. Took a few minutes to regroup then slowly cooled down back home. Not a great workout this morning, I think it was a combination of not being fully focused on the workout and also overestimating what I'd be capable of running. The first half of the workout went very poorly, but I was happy with how I finished up. It wasn't terribly fast, but I stayed focused and pushed myself the whole way. | 10 |
Day |
Round Up |
Miles |
| Week 22 04-17 - 04-23 | This week got off to a good start, I was really happy with how I raced on Sunday and then was pretty motivated on Monday and Tuesday. Felt a little too rundown on Wednesday to try a workout, though in retrospect I probably should have done some kind of effort instead of just an easy 7M. Had a good run in Lincoln on Thursday but lost all steam on Friday. Saturday was enjoyable but would have been nice had I put in another 4M or so. A little bit of a letdown following the 5k, it seems I'm not as motivated about the upcoming races as I was for the 5k. April Miles : 174 | 58 |
| SAT | Fells with Midge. Needed to get this run in before Kathryn's flight landed and wanted to get Midge tired out, too. Drove out to the Fells around 7:30am, the weather was cool with on and off rain and as soon as we parked it started to hail. Just wandered around for about an hour, mostly on the roads around the reservoirs. Midge is in much better shape than the last time we ran here, she even stuck with me during the short pick up at the end of the run. Had I known how well she'd do, and how good I'd feel, I would have planned for 90 minutes this morning. Finished up in 57 minutes which I'm calling 7M. | 7 |
| FRI | Day off. Stayed up too late last night and was too tired when I woke up, less than 12 hours after last night's run. Thought I'd run in the middle of the day but never got out the door. | 0 |
| THU | Mt Misery loop with Matt, Brett and Kurt. Met the group at 5pm and got right into it, because the weather wasn't conducive to standing around. It was a lot cooler than I was expecting and initially I was worried that just shorts and a tshirt wouldn't be sufficient. Once we got into it I felt better, and being the woods seemed to block the wind which helped. Kept things very easy today, my legs were feeling great. Trails are clear of snow and Walden is much lower than last year. Felt great to be back on the trails. | 12 |
| WED | Run to Remember course. Had originally wanted to put in double digits today, but was out until midnight with the CMU guys and was dead tired at 5:30 when my alarm went off this morning. Managed to get out the door by 6am and actually felt really good this morning. None of my nagging injuries were bothering me, running was really easy this morning. Kept things relaxed the whole way, but apparently was running slower than I thought I was, very surprised to see 54 on the watch when I got back. It's about time to get back into workouts, need to figure something out for Friday. | 7 |
| TUE | Davis-Bike Path. Took Kathryn and Nate to the airport early this morning and managed to avoid climbing into bed when I got home. I immediately got ready to run and headed out the door just after 5:30am, right as the sun was coming up. I was feeling particularly inspired after the weekend and resolved to put in good mileage today. Felt good at the start, though somehow my calves were more sore this morning than yesterday. Now that all the snow is gone I decided to give the linear park in Somerville a try, turned off Highland onto Cedar and picked up the bike path there. It took me into Davis behind the Rite-Aid, and I think I like it better. It does make the route a bit longer and I missed the usual "four mile mark" so I really have no way to compare my pace today to my pace in the past. Since it was a bit longer I didn't feel bad about taking the "shortcut" turn onto Vassar instead of taking Mass Ave to the river. Pretty standard run and I really enjoyed being out there this morning, though my left quad really started to bother me around the Galleria. It came and went over the final 10 minutes, but was not encouraging. My fear is that the quad has been absorbing more impact because my left knee has been hurting and I've changed my stride. Need to redouble stretching and icing efforts and should start Vitamin I as well. | 12 |
| MON | Audubon Circle. Wanted to run on the marathon course today, but didn't have time to go terribly far this morning. Actually set out with the idea of running an hour, felt so much better than I was expecting that I was tempted to extend to 90 minutes, but needed to get back home to help with Nate and then start work. Ran out on Commonwealth to Kenmore, picked up Beacon but turned around in Audubon Circle, right at Park Street. On the way back, I decided to take the turn on Hereford and run down Boylston past the finish line. Felt good today and picked it up a bit at the end, from the Public Garden to the State House. My knee was hurting too much on the downhill after the State House to keep running hard, so I backed off a bit. Finished with a decent enough stride in the Navy Yard, not nearly as sore as I was expecting. | 8 |
| SUN | BAA 5k, 15:52 for 21st. Warmed up 2M around the Back Bay on my own, finished with a stride behind the library then avoided the Port-A-John lines by heading into the Copley Plaza. As usual we weren't able to run many strides before the race and stood around for 8-10 minutes. Felt good off the line, surprised to see 5:00 on the clock at the mile and then ran tough the rest of the way. Dug deep to find a kick after getting passed by Jeff Caron with 200m to go, and managed to kick past the first woman just before the line. Had a great cooldown with Brendan Prindiville, about 7M mostly along the river. It felt great to really run hard again and was very happy with how I was able to push myself today. Definitely did not slip into time trial mode. I had a hard time setting goals for this race. I'm reluctant to set a goal like "run hard" or "compete well" because those are impossible to measure, but I did want to race everyone around me and not feel sorry for myself that I'm working hard to break 16:00 and I did that. I had a primary goal and a secondary goal, or Goal A and Goal B, though I wasn't totally convinced about them. The primary goal was to run faster than last year (15:42) and if that wasn't going to happen, the secondary goal was to break 16:00. I managed to hit the secondary goal and am really happy with how the day went. I think I am physically capable of a faster time, but I don't think I could have actually run much faster after taking nearly 10 months off from serious racing. There's quite a bit of rust to be busted. This was a great first race back and left me ready for more.
| 12 |
Day |
Round Up |
Miles |
| Week 21 04-10 - 04-16 | This was one of my best weeks recently. Had a good, fast workout on Sunday and then managed to put in decent mileage during the week. Had a very solid workout on Wednesday which restored a lot of confidence after last week's subpar workout. The rest of the week was about taking it easy and setting me up to feel good for the 5k on Sunday. April Miles : 116 | 51 |
| SAT | Charlestown Loop with Midge. Same as the past few weeks, headed out with Midge during a private showing. Felt pretty good the whole way, finished with 5 hill climbs at the Monument. The hope is that doing the same thing as the past two Saturdays will make me feel as good tomorrow as I have the past two Sundays. Nice day, managed to get through the run without worrying too much about tomorrow's race. | 4 |
| FRI | River with JMark, Harvey and Nick End. Got a bit of a late start this morning so met Jared and Nick by the 3 mile mark and Harvey by the MIT Sailing Pavilion. Ran down to Science Museum, then back up on the Boston side. I turned off by the Hatch Shell and took the Fielder footbridge to Beacon, then back the usual way from there. Felt good, was tempted to run about 12M just for the conversation, but managed to be responsible. | 7 |
| THU | Inman Square. Going to keep things short and easy leading up to Sunday and accomplished that today. Legs were a little sore at the start and my left knee hurt more than it did yesterday, but felt better as the run went on and felt almost good at the end. I got complacent last night and didn't ice my knee, I need to be more diligent about that. Enjoyable run, great weather, getting excited to run a race again. | 5 |
| WED | 1600-6x400-800 in 5:13-72-72-72-71-71-71-2:27. Warmed up over to MIT this morning and was really focused on getting in a final good, hard workout before Sunday's race. Felt good on the jog over, but the weather wasn't that great. Typical Boston spring day, overcast, low 40s, on and off rain, plus there was a decent wind on the track (strangely blowing out towards Briggs, so the finish was into the wind.) Didn't bother with much stretching or strides, just ran enough to get loose and then got right into the workout. Felt good early, aming for 78s, and was happy to see 37 at 200. Slowed from there though, running splits of 77-2:37 before recovering slightly to close with back to back 78s. The rain had picked up a little and I spent most of the 400m jog rest thinking about how much the cooldown back home would suck since I was already cold, just a tshirt, no gloves this morning. Tried to focus on good turnover during the 400s and was surprised to see the watch click from 34 to 35 at 200. Slowed from there, though, to hit 72. Decided during the 100m rest to take off my shirt, it was heavy and wet and swinging around, and the workout got much better. Another fast start and slower finish on the second one, then I got out slowly on the third, coming through in 36-mid and had to close hard to save a 72. That seemed to help, though, as the final 3 400s were all 35-mid at 200 and I felt good finishing. Took 200m rest and focused on running a good 800, trying to hit 2:25. Got out well, came through 200m in 36, right on schedule, but slowed slightly and hit 73 at 400m. Should have picked it up immediately but I was hurting and already working hard, so I maintained and hit 1:50 at 600m. Managed to find some extra effort to finish off the workout and closed hard. Very happy to see 2:26 when I crossed the finish line, but on closer examination it was 2:26.85 and has to be rounded up. By this point the rain had all but stopped, I had warmed up and was very happy with how the workout went. The cooldown back home but was fine, nowhere near the death march I had feared earlier. Ran this workout because I did it last year before the 5k and was curious to see how I'd match up. Predictably ran a slower mile, but wasn't too far off on the other stuff, in much worse conditions and with shorter rest it seems. Still can't figure out a pace for the 5k, but I think a 5:02 first mile like last year is out of the question. | 9 |
| TUE | Murphy's Law. My knee was really sore when I woke up this morning so I was worried about how the run would go, but it didn't bother me much during the actual run. Had originally planned on running on Highland, but the weather was so nice that I had to run down by the harbor, plus I could cut the run short by just getting on the Greenway, if needed. Ran easy and didn't take my watch, had a lot of run during this run. Felt really good early, strangely amped up and had to pull back on the reins around the Courthouse. My knee wound up pretty sore at the end and I really don't know what's going on. It feels sore, but there's no meat where it's sore, just bone. Stretching my groin does seem to help, especially the "Nintendo Power Pad Track Meet" stretch: feet wide apart, bend one knee and reach towards the opposite foot. I iced it again during breakfast, but that doesn't seem to do much. Just going to have to keep stretching and icing and being smart. | 8 |
| MON | Riverway-Brookline with Harvey. Met Brian by the MIT boathouse this morning, we crossed the river at Mass Ave and picked up the Fens at Boylston. Followed the usual route out to Rte 9 and then took Harvard Ave back through Brookline. We split up at Beacon St, which I followed into Kenmore and then took Comm Ave the rest of the way. Had wanted to get in 12M this morning and when I turned onto Beacon I was a little worried that I got sucked into going longer again, but got back home at 89:30 which is a solid 12M. Was running 7:30s on my own before meeting Harvey and we weren't exactly burning it up this morning. My left knee was really sore again, it took awhile to loosen up at the start and was really hurting on the downhills on Beacon and then was really bad going down Bowdoin/Temple/Staniford on Beacon Hill. Ran a "stride" near the end and didn't feel my knee too much, mainly because both hamstrings were terribly sore and hurting. Happy to get in the miles this morning, but my initial thought at the end was "maybe too much." Strapped an ice pack to my knee when I got inside and that seemed to help a bit. | 12 |
| SUN | 3x(400-200-400) in 73, 33, 74; 72, 33, 70; 67, 32, 68. Drove over to MIT this morning but it looked like they were getting ready for a soccer game and I didn't want to get kicked off the track mid-workout, so I just went to Harvard instead. Ran two laps of the road mile for a warm up and then did some strides on the track after a little stretching. Was concerned because it really hurt to straighten my left knee, but it didn't bother me at all during strides and I never even thought about it during the workout. My original plan was to run 75-74-73-72-71-70 for the 400s, run the 200s hard without flat out sprinting and take 200m between intervals and 400m between sets. I came through 200 in 35-high and knew that, just like last week, I'd underestimated goal times. The first 200m felt so easy I was surprised to see such a fast split, but I put the brakes on a little over the second 200 to avoid going nuts at the start of the workout. Stayed relaxed on the 200 to hit 33 fairly easily and then tried to cruise the next 400, and split it 36/37-high (watch was 74.00). During the lap rest I decided to push the second set and really hammer the final set, and that worked pretty well. Built into the first 400 of the second set and felt really good over the final 100m. Tried to run the 200 a bit faster and was surprised to see just 33 again. Really got after the last 400, got out in 34-mid and held on well down the homestretch. Took my time on the lap rest and really got focused on running the final set hard. Was clearly fired up as I got out in 33 and thought I did a good job of fighting the rest of the way, instead of just trying to hold on. Again, tried to hammer the 200 but could only manage a 32, just not able to get up on my toes enough, I guess. Got out well on the final 400, came through in 33 but that was really hard and I relaxed a bit the rest of the way. Wish I would have fought harder, but was pleased with how the workout went and didn't feel the need to keep pushing. This was 5k of continuous running, in 22:04, but I don't think that really means much. Cooled down with just one lap of the road mile because my meter was about to expire and I didn't want to bother with plugging it again. Very pleased with how today went, another workout that felt fast and easy, and a great rebound from last Wednesday. I'm more convinced now that running 14M on Tuesday really affected my workout, but still unsure of what to expect pace wise at the 5k. I do know that I'll be running 4M with some hill sprints the day before, though. Weather was beautiful today, it really got warm as the sun came up over the course of the workout: did the warm up in long sleeves and gloves (though I was pretty warm at the end), and cooled down shirtless. | 6 |
Day |
Round Up |
Miles |
| Week 20 04-03 - 04-09 | Not a great week, but not a terrible one, either. Started off with a fantastic workout on Sunday, I was really surprised at how fast and easy it was. (I also am a fan of the workout because "3x3x3" sounds like something on the secret menu at In-And-Out.) The workout did seem to tweak my left knee, as it started hurting early in the run on Monday and bothered me all week. I assume that not stretching much after running fast on Sunday was the culprit. Felt great going long on Tuesday, but that really left me in a hole for Wednesday's workout, where I really struggled to run anything close to decent times. I didn't feel tired or rundown, though, I was just slow. That workout really killed my confidence and left me unsure of how to approach the 5k. April Miles : 65 | 52 |
| SAT | Charlestown Loop with Midge. Same as last week, ran in the middle of the day with Midge because of a private showing. Midge was really apathetic and trotted behind me almost the entire way. The most excited she got was when we ran hard up Sackville. Stopped at the Monument at the end of the run for 5 short hill sprints. Felt decent today, but this was a pretty short run. | 4 |
| FRI | River-Beacon Street. Met Jared on the river, then Harvey and Dan Smith by the MIT Boathouse this morning. We ran down to Science and back up the river on the Boston side. Felt pretty good this morning and it was fun to have company on the run. Wound up going a bit longer than I originally planned and was tempted to go even longer with the guys, nice morning and good conversation. Turned back at 55 minutes, between the 6.5 and 7 mile marks, and ran back home solo, finishing at 83 minutes. Took the Fielder bridge to Beacon Street and went back the usual way. Left knee sore by the end of the run, but other than that felt good. Worked out what I think is a good plan for the next week: easy tomorrow, speed work Sunday, long-ish Monday, easy Tuesday, workout Wednesday, easy and strides the rest of the week. | 11 |
| THU | Day off. Was tired and behind schedule this morning, and once the thought of taking a day off entered my mind, a flood of reasons (excuses) followed. My left knee was pretty sore when I walked Midge, so resting that was probably good. I ran so poorly yesterday that a day off was probably a good idea. | 0 |
| WED | 3x1M in 5:22, 5:16, 5:13. Headed over to MIT this morning for the workout, felt pretty good on the way over and legs felt like they had a lot of speed in them during strides. Wasn't sure what to expect pace-wise, my plan was to start out at 5:15 and cut down from there. Was expecting that 78-79 would feel very relaxed so was thinking the first mile would feel comfortable. Went out in 40, tried to pick it up and hit 80 at 400. Wasn't ready mentally to start hammering and wound up cruising to the 5:22 with splits of 80-81-80-81. Had a lot of negative thoughts during the first mile but did a good job of re-focusing during the 400m rest. Accepted the fact that I wasn't feeling great today and resolved to just work hard over the final two miles. Got out a little better to start the second mile, came through halfway in 2:39 and managed to keep working on the second half. Started off the final mile with a 77 and got excited, lost focus on the second lap and hit 2:37 at 800, but rebounded with back to back 78s. Took another 200m rest and then ran a hard 200m in 33 to make it a full 5k of work this morning. My legs felt decent throughout the workout, my hip flexor was sore at the very start but loosened up and there was nothing that affected the workout at all. The plan was to use this workout as a predictor for the 5k next week, but hopefully this is a poor predictor of what I'm capable of. Certainly came in too confident about my fitness and shouldn't have been expecting 5:15 to feel comfortable. Happy with how I responded, though, and instead of allowing things to spiral out of control I ran hard on the final two miles. I had a lot of negative thoughts during the slow first mile but stayed positive over the final two miles. I've had a string of workouts where I've felt really good, but that can't continue forever. I'm still unsure of what to expect for the 5k, but I know I won't run 14M the day before. I did my best to recover, had a big plate of pasta last night and even ate vegetables during lunch yesterday, and really I didn't feel sore or run down, but I suspect I was a little fatigued today. So the plan is to regroup, hopefully regain some confidence and do what it takes to get to the line next Sunday feeling good. | 9 |
| TUE | Fens-Riverway with JMark and Harvey. Met Jared and Brian along the river by New House this morning, we ran down to Mass Ave and took Boylston to the Fens. Ran out to Jamaica, but turned around instead of looping around the pond. Ran together back over the BU Bridge and then Jared came along down to Mass Ave. Got a little caught up in the conversation and wagering, so this wound up being longer than I had originally planned. My left knee was sore at the beginning again and I think I figured out why it's causing my foot to smack on the ground. I don't fully extend my leg because of the pain, so my knee is bent when my foot hits the ground and my heel doesn't hit the ground first. Things loosened up after a few minutes though and didn't give me any problems the rest of the way. A little tired at the end, but ran a 7:10 along the river and felt like I could have kept on going. Finished up at 1:45, which is 7:30 pace for 14M. Hopefully I'm recovered enough tomorrow that I'm still able to have a good workout. | 14 |
| MON | Docks-Greenway. Tired this morning and really struggled to get through this run. Felt good enough at the very beginning, but after two or three minutes my left knee was bothering me, which is a new development. The best way to describe it is that it's stiff and feels like I can't straighten it fully. The result was that I was really smacking my left foot on the ground, I wasn't able to roll from my heel to toe. Also noticed I couldn't change the direction my toe was pointing, but I don't know if I've ever been able to do that while running. Opted for Docks, knowing I could cut it short if need be. Coming into South Station it was clear that I needed to just head home. Nothing was hurting so terribly that I couldn't have kept pushing through, but I was lacking the energy to see it through. All along the Greenway it was left knee and right hip bothering me, and I felt like I was 1,000 years old. My left knee was really tight once I stopped and was actually pretty painful. Hard to isolate exactly what it was, it's the inside of the knee but not sure if it's quad or calf or what that's causing it. Slapped some ice on it while eating breakfast and it felt better. Hope I remember to do that again tonight. Had wanted to get some mileage in today to compensate for skipping the long run yesterday, so will try to get that in tomorrow. | 6 |
| SUN | 3x3x300 in 54, 52, 52; 56, 52, 51; 53, 49, 50. Drove over to MIT this morning in case the track was locked and I had to go to Harvard. Ran the usual 2M warm up loop and then tried to really stretch out my hip well. Ran a couple strides to loosen up and then got into the workout. Must have done a good job of getting ready because my hip never bothered me and it felt fast and easy from the jump. Came in with a plan of 60-57-54 for each set and after coming through in 19 for the first 100 tried to ease off slightly. The wind was a little stiff on the backstretch, but not a problem on the curve, so even though I tried to ease off I wound up running faster and hitting 54. I wasn't sure what to do from there, that was as fast as I had come into the workout expecting to run, and it was so easy I knew I had a lot more. Came up with a plan of trying to run the next 2 faster, then starting off the final two sets a little slower. Felt great on the next two 300s, getting out in 17-mid on each of them and not pressing too much at any time. Had 100m between the intervals and 500m between sets and I appreciated the extra rest after the first 3. Purposefully held back to start off the second set and felt better speeding up from there to finish off the set. Nothing special on this set, though I did feel a little burning in my legs over the final 50m of the final interval. It's been a long time since I've felt that, but it was still completely familiar. Decided I'd try to get a little bit more from the final set and didn't hold back as much on the first interval. Still very comfortable to hit 54 and then did a great job of hammering the second without worrying about the last interval. My legs were pretty tired after running the 49, then got off the line well and tried to hammer final interval but couldn't quite get it going over the last 200m. Forced myself to cool down with a BU loop, managed to resist the temptation of cutting it short. Very pleased with how the workout went, it was significantly faster than I was expecting. In retrospect, starting out at 60 would have been terribly slow, given that I strung together 3 consecutive 80-82 second quarters at the end of each 3.25M interval on Wednesday. It helped that I have no concept of what a fast 300m time is, I felt like I was running great times and didn't realize until halfway through that 52 is still pretty slow. In my current frame of reference, though, running feeling good at 52 is a great development. Starting to think I'll be ready for BAA 5k. | 8 |
Day |
Round Up |
Miles |
| Week 19 03-27 - 04-02 | Overall a mediocre week in that I skipped Monday and didn't get a true long run in. But I had a fantastic workout on Wednesday morning with Carly, much better than I could have expected and had good runs on Tuesday and Thursday as well. It feels like I'm right on the edge of a breakthrough, if I can only keep putting in the work. April Miles : 13 | 53 |
| SAT | Charlestown Loop with Midge. We had to be out of the house at 11:30 for a walk-through, so Kathryn took Nate for a run and I took Midge. Ran the usual loop around Charlestown and finished up with 5 short sprints up the grass hill at the Monument. Midge wasn't really in the mood today and after we passed the Constitution she spent the rest of the run trotting behind me at the end of her leash. I felt great today and the weather was perfect, I was overheating in a long sleeve shirt and gloves. | 4 |
| FRI | Castle-Bunker Hill. Woke up to see snow on the ground, welcome to April. Able to get an earlier start because Kathryn's staying home, but after taking Midge out, etc. I didn't leave until 6:30am. The snow wasn't a big problem to deal with, some areas were clear, others had half an inch of snow and other places were just slush. Didn't have much of a choice in routes, had to run Castle-Bunker Hill on the final day of snow this winter (hopefully). My hip flexor was pretty sore by the end, almost certainly from slipping and sliding through the snow/slush. Another basic, boring run. Seems like a longshot to be able to put in speedwork tomorrow as planned. | 9 |
| THU | Fenway with JMark and Harvey. Met Jared and Brian along the river and convinced them to get off the river and we ran past Fenway since baseball season starts today. Had a good time running with those guys, but I was pretty beat up after yesterday. My right hamstring was pretty sore right where it hits my butt, for lack of a better explanation. Loosened up over the course of the run but was happy to be done when I got home. Wrapped up at 71 minutes, for what it's worth. Not much happened today, though I did get a glimpse of the field at Fenway through an open door. March Miles : 180 | 9 |
| WED | 2x5200m in 18:40, 18:25 via 5:58-2:56-2:51-2:49-82-82-80, 5:49-2:53-2:49-2:50-82-82-79. Paced Carly during her workout, she ran 2x(1600-800-400-400) and I just kept running during her rest periods. Took 3:00 between the two sets. Warmed up over to MIT at 7:30 this morning and was actually feeling pretty good and my legs felt quick during the few strides I ran to get loose. Started off with a 90 second lap and despite trying to speed up over the course of the first mile. Felt good at the end and comfortably sped up a little bit when running solo. Ran fairly even splits for the next 800 with Carly and handled the increase in speed well. Tried to speed up a bit when running solo but was a bit stuck on 84s and not sure how I'd do on the 400s. Got out well on all 3 400s, but didn't manage to close with any speed until the final one. Jogged an easy lap as rest and even though my legs were fatigued I felt confident at the start of the next set. Was a little too excited at the start and took us out in 40, the speed from the 400s made it feel pretty comfortable, but adjusted from there and ran an 85 for the first lap then hit 87-88 for the next three. Didn't feel that great on the 800s, I think the effort and distance was starting to get to me. I didn't have any problems maintaining pace, but staying focused and in the workout was more difficult. Also, somewhere in the second 800, with Carly, I noticed my right leg was much weaker than my left. I think my right hip flexor was just too tired and I felt very uneven the rest of the way. I had no problems lifting my left knee but felt like I was pushing my right leg forward instead of pulling the right knee up, if that makes any sense. There wasn't any pain (my hamstring never bothered me) and I managed to get through the rest of the workout without a problem, but I should probably be doing a little more stretching and icing. Shifting gears for the 400s was hard, my legs weren't hurting but I was pretty spent and didn't have a lot more effort to put into the workout. The hardest part of the workout was probably staying focused at the start of the second 400 as Carly was stopping. On the final 400, Carly followed me through 200 then I swung out to the outside of the lane and she started picking it up. Had to work to stay with her from 200-300 and then found a groove and felt pretty good over the final 100m. Pretty tired when it was all over, had a slow jog back home to cooldown and my right hip was pretty angry by the end of that. Very pleased with how things went, this was exactly the kind of workout I've been wanting to do and I certainly couldn't have done it on my own. Managed 6.5M at 5:40 pace and just two weeks ago couldn't run 2M at that pace. Spent a bit of time on the warm up thinking about not wanting the BAA 5k to be just a time trial and needing to get to where I'm able to push myself beyond what's comfortable. When I'm not in great shape and not up near the front of races, I struggle to be competitive and have a tendency to run as hard as I think I can and don't push myself beyond that. My goal is to go into the race with a recalibrated frame of reference and care deeply about beating the people around me. Today's workout didn't directly translate, since I was mostly cruising along at a hard but manageable pace, but I got to work on hanging in there as my body tired and I'll definitely be more fit during future workouts. Another brick in the road. | 13 |
| TUE | River-Beacon-North Station. Headed out along the river this morning and met Harvey by New House. I knew motivation would be an issue again, so I made plans to meet up with Harvey and it was very worth it. We looped down around Museum of Science, ran up to the 6.5 then turned around, ran back to the Hatch Shell and took Fielder Bridge to Beacon St. Parted ways with Harvey there and ran up the hill and over to North Station on my own. It felt good to get out for a long run again (85:30) and was good to catch up with Harvey. | 12 |
| MON | Day off. Pretty cold this morning and didn't want to deal with that. Just lazy. | 0 |
| SUN | Docks-Greenway. Completely apathetic and tired when I woke up this morning and very nearly took the day off. Somehow managed to get my shoes on and get out the door just after 8am. Felt a little better during the run and almost talked myself into going longer, but kept it short and easy today. Not sure what it is exactly, but for the most part I'm not that excited about dealing with the cold weather anymore. Just a blah day. | 6 |
Day |
Round Up |
Miles |
| Week 18 03-20 - 03-26 | Missed a couple of days, including Sunday's long run, so this wasn't a great week mileage-wise, but ran two very good workouts (very good is a relative term) and am now feeling a lot more confident in myself. Very happy with how I felt on Tuesday, but thought I would have been closer to 5:20. Ecstatic, then, to start off Friday's workout with a 5:18, but wished the 800s afterwards had been quicker. Would have been interesting to see how the workout would have gone on the track. March Miles : 140 | 41 |
| SAT | Fells with Midge. Got to Bellevue Pond just before 8am this morning, right as they were unlocking the gates. We got right into the run, starting out on the blue trail and eventually working our way over towards the Sheepsfold. We were at the base of Bear Hill around 30 minutes into the run and it was probably a mistake for me to run hard up the hill. That seemed to break Midge a bit, and she spent the rest of the run trotting along behind me. I felt pretty good, but my right hip and hip flexor were pretty sore. Not sure if that was because of the speedwork yesterday or just the rough terrain today. Had hoped to go a bit longer today, but ended at 55 minutes which was long enough with the way my hip felt and probably 10 minutes too long for Midge. | 7 |
| FRI | 1M-800-800, 1M of 20s on, 20s off in 5:18, 2:39, 2:34, 5:45. Had planned to do this on the track at MIT, so warmed up over to there this morning only to find the track was locked. Who knew they started locking the track? I had to scramble a bit, but the workout translated decently to the stretch on the river from 2.5-3.5. Got more or less right into it once I got over to the river and it took a minute or so for my hamstring to loosen up, just like Wednesday. Still managed to get out hard, I think, and managed to keep pushing throughut the entire mile. Thought I saw 2:32 at the half, but I was guessing at where the 3 was (more on that later) and I know I didn't slow to 2:46 on the second half. Took 2:30 rest and got into the 800 with another hard start. Did a good job of working hard, but missed the 3 again and stopped at the crosswalk. Took 1:30 rest, most of which was spent looking for the 3, but I wasn't able to find it. Started at the crosswalk again, which I think makes the first 800 long and the second one short. Really started to struggle over the final minute or so and could feel myself extending my stride as I tried to speed up. Took enough rest to set up the timer on the watch and got into the mile of 20s/20s. Tried to focus on being efficient during the fast stretches and not jogging during the easy parts. I just extended the final 20s stretch by 5s to get to the mile mark. Took a couple minutes to regroup and then jogged home easily to finish up. Somewhat happy with this workout, but again felt like it should have been a bit quicker. Still, given where I was just last week, being able to run about 5:10 pace is a great improvement. Would have been nice to have done this on the track and gotten more feedback about pace during the intervals. Hopefully I'm moving beyond the "rust busting" stage and can get into some more serious workouts over the next few weeks. | 8 |
| THU | Day off. Wasn't excited to deal with the snow this morning and couldn't find a time during the day to run. | 0 |
| WED | 2M-1M-1M along the river in 11:31-5:25-5:25. Warmed up over to the 4.5M mark and more or less got right into the workout. My right hamstring was pretty sore at the start but after less than a minute it started to feel a lot better and I was in a good rhythm. Excited to see 2:50-5:40 for the early splits but again lost focus in the third half mile. Came through in 8:37 (2:57), and was more focused over the final 800m but couldn't bring the pace back around and finished with a 2:54. Took just under 3:00 rest and got myself re-focused and ready to run the final 2 miles hard. Wanted to really get after the first mile and not be concerned about saving anything for the second mile. Started out great and hit 2:41 at the half. Really tried to hammer the rest of the way but slowed a bit and hit 5:25. After 2:00 rest was back on the line and got out really well again. Glad to see another 2:40 at the half and really felt like I was working hard on the final half mile. Completely expected to see 5:15 as it felt like I was redlining and doing a great job of pushing myself. I wasn't running as fast as it felt, apparently, because I finished up in 5:25. My form is definitely not very efficient, I was really slapping my feet on the ground instead of getting up on my toes as I tried to run faster. Went back and forth on how I felt about this workout afterwards. Had I known before that I would run the times I did, I would have been pleased as it was a big step forward from last week, especially after yesterday's mileage. But given how good I felt today, I came away disappointed that I didn't run faster. On the cooldown, though, I started to be happy that I was disappointed, since that means I'm raising my expectations for myself. | 8 |
| TUE | Elliot with JMark and Bedoya. Met Jared on the river just after 7am and started running up river, planning on Fake Fresh. Bumped into Bedoya just after JFK and we changed our route and stayed on the river. Crossed over at Elliot and headed back to Science where we split up. Felt good today, maybe because I ate a big plate of pasta last night. Didn't check too many splits, but we were running about 7:15 the few times I looked. Out there for 93 minutes, this was a long 12M, but I'll round down. | 12 |
| MON | Back Bay with 1M "time trial" in 5:34. Got a late start this morning, started the run around 7am, but my legs felt halfway decent from the beginning. Saw Harvey and Dan Smith on the Mass Ave bridge, but they were heading up river and I was on my way home. Tried running hard for the mile along the river, I felt good but wasn't running very fast. Knew I got off to a slow start and apparently I never got things in gear. Hit the half around 2:47 so it was fairly evenly split, despite feeling like I closed hard. Back to normal speed the rest of the way home. | 6 |
| SUN | Day off. Had a bunch of chores and errands today, plus my parents are in town and were coming over to see Nate. Very busy day, unfortunately no time to run. | 0 |
Day |
Round Up |
Miles |
| Week 17 03-13 - 03-19 | Got off to a good start this week, working hard, but wasn't able to close it out the way I had hoped. Another 13M long run on Sunday and forced my way through a double digit run the next day. Ran a workout on Tuesday morning but didn't run all that fast. I made a mistake in underestimating myself and started off too slowly. Probably could have managed back to back 11:40s, but even that wouldn't be very impressive. Thought I had a chance to get to 70M this week, but that hinged on putting in 13M in Lincoln but the trails weren't clear enough yet. March Miles : 99 | 54 |
| SAT | Run to Remember course in 32:23. Same idea as a few weeks ago, I ran easy over to New Chardon and then simply tried (unsuccessfully) to hammer for 5M. Felt like I got off to a good start, but lost focus after Charles Street and wasn't ever able to really get it back. Had spurts of being focused and pushing hard, but for the most part the final 3-4 miles were coasting at a "fast" pace. Disappointed to see this was 45 seconds slower than two weeks ago. | 7 |
| FRI | Broadway-Prospect. At a loss for how far and where to run this morning, so ran over the bridge to Memorial and cut up Broadway, following it to Prospect and took the usual route home from there. My legs felt terrible the whole way, finally felt halfway decent up Bunker Hill at the very end, but today was an effort to just put in bare bones mileage. | 6 |
| THU | Lincoln with the Elys. Got started at 5:30 and felt good early, though my right ankle and my right hip, a little bit, bothered me throughout. The run was a lot of fun, it was good to catch up with Matt and Brett, but the trails aren't ready for running yet. Not bad early, but there were a few stretches where the snow was 5 inches deep or the trail was iced over. Pretty bad along the road by Walden and also climbing up the hills on the way to the farm at the end. Got through the standard route, what we call 10M, in 90 minutes. Today was a "time on the feet" kind of day and I was actually pretty tired at the end of the run. Going to have to wait a few more weeks before trying Lincoln again. | 10 |
| WED | Day off. Had to be at home early because we had painters coming over, and wasn't able to get away from work the rest of the day. | 0 |
| TUE | 2x2M in 12:03, 11:33. The plan this morning was 2x2M on the river, shooting for sub 12:00 on the first and then 20 seconds faster on the second. To avoid the construction by Science I warmed up over the locks to Staniford and took the footbridge by MGH. Stretched out my right hamstring briefly before starting, but that seemed to just make it tighter. Felt great early otherwise and came through the first splits in 3:00 and 6:00. Got too complacent, though, and ran a 3:07 on the 3rd half mile. Rallied really well though and closed with a 2:56. Gave myself 4:00 rest, which turned out to be much more than I needed, and had psyched myself up to run better on the second 2M. Got out well and came through in 2:55/5:50. Found even more in my legs over the final mile and closed with 2:52/2:51. Pleased with this as a first rust buster, but I made some mistakes with the plan. Just trying to break 12:00 was too soft a goal and I wasn't pushing myself after clicking off the first 6:00 mile so easily. Did a better job of running hard on the second interval and that just left me wondering what I could have done had I been more aggressive. I've got a lot more work ahead of me, but this was a good introduction to running hard again. I need to do a better job of stretching and icing my right hip and hamstring, I could really feel them affecting my stride and actually limiting how hard I could run. Felt like it would have pulled if I tried to get up on my toes and extend my stride. | 8 |
| MON | Fake Fresh backwards. A little tough to get started this morning, and we didn't get Nate out the door to daycare until nearly 7am. Pretty tired throughout the whole run, first back to back double digit runs in over a month. Just slogging through more miles, about 7:40 along the river at the end. | 10 |
| SUN | Ocean-Broadway. Same route as last week and pretty much the same speed. Started a bit after 8am, but felt earlier because of daylight savings time. Felt a lot better than last week, but wound up not running any faster. Was 59:20 to the base of G Street and felt good on the climb up the hill. Not much happened on the run, and wasn't dragging during the last section on the Greenway. | 13 |
Day |
Round Up |
Miles |
| Week 16 03-06 - 03-12 | This week was better than the past few have been, but still not that great. Had a decent run on Sunday morning, glad I went long but had hoped to get a bit farther than 13M. Need to work on increasing the mileage of my long run. Then got overwhelmed by work for a few days but managed to get out the door on Wednesday and put in an okay 5:22 along the river. Friday was a good run with a group of guys and then tried to get a little bit of speed work, such as it is, done on Saturday. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel with work, finally, and the goal is to run every day next week. March Miles : 45 | 38 |
| SAT | Out and back to MIT track, with a mile of ins-and-outs in 5:59. Had decided that today was a good time to start working on turnover, so headed over to MIT along the river for some "speedwork" on the track. My right hamstring was sore from yesterday's run, but I figured it would loosen up enough on the 3M over to the track and I wasn't too worried. It never really loosened up, though, and I had to force my way through the mile on the track. I didn't bother taking 100m splits, but ran laps of 84-91-92-92. I'm certainly not going to outkick anyone at this point, but this was fun and I've got to start somewhere. The rest of the run was boring enough, nice weather and my legs felt good, aside from the R hamstring. (There seems to be some confusion surrounding my first derivative comment from Wednesday. In my world, "decreasing pace" means getting faster and "increasing pace" means getting slower. On the y-axis, 6:00 pace is above 5:00 pace.) | 7 |
| FRI | River-Beacon-North Station. Got started around 6:50 this morning and headed over to the river to meet up with Harvey, DSmith, Bedoya and Friedman. Met them around the BU Boathouse and headed back down river to Science. Looped up the Boston side and turned at the 6.5M mark with Harvey and Bedoya. Ran back down to the Hatch Shell and took the Fiedler bridge over to Beacon. Harvey split off to head home and I ran up Beacon with Bedoya, who turned off at Park. Finished up back home alone. Stopped right at 89:45, averaging 7:30 for 12M. Was running 7:20 pace early on the river but didn't check any splits after that. Felt pretty good the whole way, having guys to talk too really helped and I felt worse once I started running alone. | 12 |
| THU | Day off. | 0 |
| WED | Back Bay, with mile "time trial" in 5:22. Now that the snow is largely gone, I'm getting to do all of the things I wanted to do but couldn't during the winter. Kept things easy to the 2.5 mark and then tried to really hammer the mile along the river. My legs felt good, but my turnover wasn't that great and I could tell I hadn't run fast or hard in a long time. Had resolved not to check the half mile split, but it wasn't an issue since I completely missed the mark. Lost focus around the half mile and was able to get it back on track, slightly, by Longfellow. Aside for that small section after the half mile, I'm pretty certain that first derivative of the graph of my instantaneous pace would have been positive for the whole mile. 5:22 was slower than I was hoping for, would have liked to be closer to 5:00, but not bad for a first effort. | 6 |
| TUE | Day off. | 0 |
| MON | Day off. | 0 |
| SAT | Boston Harbor-Ocean-G Street-Broadway-Chinatown-Greenway. Was really looking forward to running along the Ocean this morning and also hoped to put in 2 hours if at all possible. Followed the usual route along the Harbor to the start of Ollie and into South Boston. I wasn't feeling good at all and was tempted to turn back at Long Wharf, 15 minutes into the run. Ran backwards on the Ollie Course to Castle Island then took the causeway and followed the beach down to G Street. As bad as I felt over the first 30 minutes of the run, the second 30 minutes weren't any worse and maybe even a bit better. Was at the base of G Street at an hour, ran up G Street (without pushing it) and circled Telegraph Hill then took Broadway all the back into the city. By this point I had abandoned thoughts of running for two hours and was just trying to get home. Decided I'd take the Greenway, so I wound my way through Chinatown to South Station and followed the Greenway home. Wound up being 98 minutes and 13M, or 7:30ish pace, which is slower than I had hoped but decent given how bad I felt. Was really dragging by the end of the run, the thought of putting in another 22 minutes was pretty daunting. | 13 |
Day |
Round Up |
Miles |
| Week 15 02-27 - 03-05 | Didn't do much this week as I was trying to hit a big deadline at work. There are times when I don't run and don't care about it, but I'd really like to get back into shape and wish I didn't have to miss all these runs. Thankfully things should be winding down with work, at least winding down enough to give me some flexibility in the mornings. March Miles : 7 | 16 |
| SAT | Run to Remember course. After a long week at work I was happy to finally have time to run again. Headed out early, was feeling good and a bit amped up, so I decided to try and push things today. Once I got to Congress and New Chardon I started running hard and tried to maintain a good pace along the entire course. Hard to describe the pace I was running, I was trying to run fast but I wasn't forcing every step. Still, I was pretty tired when I finally got back to the New Chardon, running the "course" in 31:40. (I didn't follow the course strictly, as I cut off the one block out and back on Comm Ave and added on past the start/finish line to compensate.) Was hoping to get closer to 30 minutes, but averaging 6:20-ish isn't terrible at this point. Really tightened up on the easy jog back home. | 7 |
| FRI | Day off. | 0 |
| THU | Day off. | 0 |
| WED | Day off. | 0 |
| TUE | Day off. | 0 |
| MON | Day off. February Miles : 124 | 0 |
| SUN | Davis Sq. Was really motivated to run long today, but woke up to about 3 inches of snow on the ground. Running through the snow was slow going but the footing was fine. Ran the usual route out to Davis Square along Highland but was losing motivation the whole way. Got to Davis, turned onto Elm and headed back home. Ran to Union Square, then took Prospect to Cambridge to extend things slightly. Was out for around 70 minutes and the route measured 9M online. | 9 |
Day |
Round Up |
Miles |
| Week 14 02-20 - 02-26 | Not a very good week. Should have run much more than I did when I was in Florida, but I let my laziness control things. Had a good run on Saturday, though, and it left me wanting more, so hopefully I can build on that and get off to a good start in March. February Miles : 115 | 17 |
| SAT | Castle-Bunker Hill. Got up around 6:30 this morning and was out the door by 8am, after playing with Nate and taking Midge out. Felt really good the whole way, I guess two weeks off has left my legs refreshed. After rain yesterday and snow overnight I was worried about ice, but the sidewalks were mostly fine and I opted to run in the street down Marlborough instead of taking the Comm Ave mall. Finished up right around 61 minutes and could have easily extended the run. | 9 |
| FRI | Day off. Had planned to get up and run early, since Kathryn is still on break, but wasn't able to get out of bed. Got a lot of work to do. | 0 |
| THU | Day off. Up early for a 6:20am flight back to Boston, then spent the afternoon running errands. | 0 |
| WED | Day off. Don't really have a good excuse. Should have gotten up and run, for some reason lying around reading all day is wearing me out. | 0 |
| TUE | Day off. Was heading to Red Sox spring training this morning and wasn't able to get up early enough for a run. Pretty worn out after and spent the afternoon reading and sitting at the pool. Broke up the excitement with a nap, too. | 0 |
| MON | McGregor Drive in Ft Myers. Got up and headed out the door before 8am, first run in a week. My legs were pretty unstable at first and I never felt great but I did settle into a little bit of a rhythm. Headed out of the Landings and turned right onto McGregor, then turned back at 32 minutes. Really enjoyed the run, probably high 60s with a clear sky, much better than what I would have been dealing with in Boston. Pretty worn out by the end of the run, unfortunately. | 8 |
| SUN | Day off. Really tired in the morning so I slept in and then was reluctant to head out for a run in the mid-day heat. Tried to re-fuel well after fasting for 4 days. | 0 |
Day |
Round Up |
Miles |
| Week 13 02-13 - 02-19 | Terrible week. Off to a great start on Sunday with a solid long run and managed to force my way through a run the next day. Things went downhill from there, missed Tuesday to take care of Nate and spent the rest of the week sick. Hopefully will be able to put in some good mileage while on vacation in Florida. February Miles : 98 | 23 |
| TUE | Day off. Flying to Florida in the afternoon, my stomach was still upset in the morning. Had my first real meal in 4 days once we got to Fort Myers. | 0 |
| FRI | Day off. Still recuperating. | 0 |
| THU | Day off. Still a bit sick and weak, barely ate yesterday and my stomach was pretty upset. | 0 |
| WED | Day off. Caught the bug that Kathryn had and spent the day in bed. | 0 |
| TUE | Day off. Kathryn was sick today, so I got up and took Nate to daycare then went to work. Unable to run at the end of the day, either. | 0 |
| MON | Run to Remember course. Really feeling yesterday's long run this morning, shuffled through the majority of this run. Kathryn was staying home again so I was able to get out the door before 6:30 this morning. Glad I didn't take my watch with me today. | 7 |
| SUN | Out and back on Marathon Course from Cleveland Circle. Met a big group of people at Cleveland Circle at 9:30am for a long run followed by Harvey's shirtless lap. Apparently Beacon is iced over so we started out on Commonwealth. Pace was pretty easy at the start but started picking up about halfway through. Ran out to the 15M mark and then came back. A little dicey at times after the firehouse, but really nice running on the carriage road. Hung in the back for the most part but Terry, Lutz and I put in an effort starting at Heartbreak to close the gap up to the leaders and I actually felt pretty good doing that. Really enjoyed working hard. Then ran an extra 1.5M with Harvey during his shirtless lap, along with McCalmon and JMark. The Reservoir path was iced over so we just ran the "lap" on the roads. Harvey claims we averaged 5:47, but it really felt like we were running 5:0x. That's easily the fastest I've run in 5 or 6 months. | 16 |
Day |
Round Up |
Miles |
| Week 12 02-06 - 02-12 | February Miles : 75 | 37 |
| SAT | Day off. Feeling more apathetic than normal. | 0 |
| FRI | Run to Remember course. Kathryn was staying home from work today so I was able to get out the door early. There's a big difference between running at 6am and running at 7am, and I really prefer going at 6am. A lot easier to run, much less traffic to deal with. Pretty boring run. | 7 |
| THU | Day off. Nate got sick yesterday so I stayed home to take care of him, which meant no time for a run. | 0 |
| WED | Day off. Feeling overwhelmed with work, skipped the run and got right into it. | 0 |
| TUE | Fenway with JMark. Met Jared on the river at 7am this morning to gloat about the Superbowl. When discussing where to go I mentioned that it was Truck Day, so we decided to swing past Fenway to see the truck. Another warm morning and it should have been three straight days in a baseball cap but I wussed out. Feet got very wet during the run, lots of slush and puddles to deal with thanks to the melting. Ran up to BU, crossed over the river and wound our way to Landmark Center, then down Brookline to Yawkey. Hooked a left on Van Ness and ran right past the truck. Made our way to Boylston, ran to the Common and then parted ways at North Station. This was almost 70 minutes and just short of 9M but I'm rounding up. | 9 |
| MON | Castle-Bunker Hill. Wasn't quite ready to run when Kathryn and Nate left, but I got out the door by 7am. Ran the standard route and didn't have too many problems with footing, things were much better than yesterday. Even the Mass Ave bridge, which I was quite worried about, turned out to be fine. Preemptively decided to try and run on a side street instead of Prospect, but gave up after a few blocks because even the side streets were busy. Turned out to not be too much foot traffic to deal with, though. Was running straight into the sun on the climb up Bunker Hill and the glare of the sidewalk meant I couldn't tell what was ice and what was water. Wound up running in the road where the glare was still bad but I knew there wasn't any ice. I've always called this 9M, so I'll do that again but imagine it's a bit short, since I was running for just 68 minutes, well faster than my recent 8:00 pace. Maybe I was just excited about back to back days wearing a baseball cap instead of winter hat. | 9 |
| SUN | Davis-Bike Path, amended. Another 7:30am start and another trip out to Davis Square. Really excited to run when I saw 40 on the thermometer, but the roads weren't in great shape and that made the run pretty tough. There was a lot of melting and rain yesterday which lead to a lot of ice patches that hadn't yet melted this morning. The worst was sections of packed down snow, they melted yesterday and froze overnight, leaving very slick ice that was impossible to run on. The good thing about running this early is that I was able to run in the street for a large portion of the time and there weren't many cars to deal with. Managed to get from Davis to Mass Ave on the bike path, though it was slow going, and decided against continuing on to Russell Field. Instead I took Harvey St to Clifton St to Rindge, which likely cut off some distance. (How strange is it that there's a Harvey St and Shea Rd so close to each other?) I gave up on the sidewalks after Porter Square and managed to run the rest of the way down Mass Ave in the street. No issue with traffic (even ran a red light in front of a cop) but I was running straight at the sun and the glare off the road was almost unbearable. Maybe should have worn eye black. I made up the distance I had cut off in Cambridge at the end, though, when instead of running over the bridge into Charlestown I crossed the dam at Science Museum and ran past the Garden to the locks instead. The bridge into Charlestown looked completely iced over and I'm sure it would have taken 5 minutes of shuffling to get over it. Wound up being a long 12M and about 96 minutes on the watch. Was getting really frustrated with the conditions by the end and was happy when the run was over. Glad to put in back to back 12 mile runs, though I was pretty tired by the time I hit Central Square. Felt like I was running at a good clip down Mass Ave and tried to match that speed on the river to measure it (always an impossible task) and hit 3:30. Maybe I'm starting to get in shape? | 12 |
Day |
Round Up |
Miles |
| Week 11 01-30 - 02-05 | A pretty good week and definitely a good start to February. Would have been nice to run on Thursday, but 56M in 6 days is acceptable. Probably would have been 63M had I run 7 days, and my legs handled 9M/day average. Ready to step up to 70MPW, I think. February Miles : 38 | 56 |
| SAT | Davis-Bike Path. Up early as usual thanks to Nate and headed out around 7:30 for this run. Had promised myself I'd do a longer run today and managed to live up to that promise. Things felt good and was surprised to see this run clock in at 96+ minutes. Timed the half mile on the river (running on the MIT side) in just over 3:30. I was definitely running faster there than I had been the rest of the run, but wanted to see how fast I could run without trying to run fast. It made sense to me at the time, basically trying to find my fastest "effortless" pace. | 12 |
| FRI | Memorial-River St-Cambridge St. Headed out around 7am this morning planning on another Harvard Sq-Broadway loop, but along the way decided I'd head up the river and hopefully bump into some guys on their morning run. No such luck, though, and didn't want to do out and back on the river, so I took River Street into Central Square. Sidewalks were pretty bad, but I was able to run in the road a fair amount. A lot of foot traffic to navigate around on Prospect Street, too, and if I had been thinking I would have gotten onto a quieter side street. Legs felt good the whole way and where the footing was good it felt like I was able to run with some speed (even though this was another 60+ minutes for 8M.) | 8 |
| THU | Day off. Was convinced the roads would be too icy this morning so didn't even try to run. | 0 |
| WED | Boston Common with Brendan. Out the door at 6:20 this morning, since Kathryn had a snow day I was able to start early. We were in the middle of another snow storm, so I naturally headed over to the Common. Bumped into Brendan on Tremont during the first lap and ran with him the rest of the time. Put in 4 laps before heading back to Charlestown, ran for a total of 64 minutes. All laps were 8:0x, so around 7:30 pace. Getting sick of dealing with all this snow and it's unclear when we'll get a break. | 8 |
| TUE | Fake Fresh with JMark and Will. Met Jared along the river at 7am this morning and we decided to do the old normal, running up to Harvard Square along the river. Bumped into Will around Western Ave and he ran with us the rest of the way. Running a bit faster than recently and though my legs were tired at times it felt good to be back at 7:00 pace (caught a quasi-split along the river at the end.) Ran all the way back to Science Museum with JMark and Will, then finished up into Charlestown alone. Dealing with a little bit of fresh snow, but footing was pretty good all around. 75 minutes for the whole run, I think I was normally in the 73s when I was in shape and there wasn't any snow. | 10 |
| MON | Docks-Greenway. Legs felt really, really good at the start, felt like I was running fast without much effort. That feeling gradually disappeared, though. My legs still felt good, but I no longer felt like I was running quickly. Not much of interest during this run, though my left ankle didn't bother me at all, so that was nice. January Miles : 197 | 6 |
| SUN | Davis-Bike Path-Mass Ave again. This has become my Sunday route lately and got started around 7am this morning. Wasn't sore at all from clmbing hills yesterday but ran easy the whole way and didn't ever try to force the pace. At some point during the run the inside of my left ankle started hurting and wound up aching with every step the rest of the way. I didn't pay any attention to it at first because it's never given me any problems and I figured it would work itself out, but it never did. It didn't seem to be affecting anything, it was just uncomfortable. The worst part of the run was having the jingle from one of Nate's toys stuck in my head for half an hour. At least I got a good refresher on how to count from one to ten. Another slow long run, today was 95 minutes, and still no idea why I'm running so slowly. | 12 |
Day |
Round Up |
Miles |
| Week 10 01-23 - 01-29 | Not the greatest of weeks because I missed 3 days of running, but I really enjoyed the days I did run and didn't mind being out for 60+ minutes each time. I've managed to (hopefully) move past the 4 and 5 milers, now I just have to combine that with 7 days of running. January is wrapping up and even though it didn't go quite as I had hoped (missed 5 days instead of 2, haven't gotten to 70MPW yet) I'm happy with the progress I've made. If I can build on that and keep running more through February, instead of plateauing, I should be ready to do some real work in March. If I fail to do that, though, and keep running 40-50 MPW and missing 1-2 days per week, it's going to be a long spring. January Miles : 179 | 36 |
| SAT | Hour on Bunker Hill. Had wanted to get out early before traffic for this one, but slept in a bit and didn't leave until 7:30am. Still, there weren't too many cars to deal with during the run. Ran right over to the base of Bunker Hill and proceeded to just run over and back for about an hour. Wanted to get in a harder run without actually doing a workout, so I figured climbing hills would be a good idea. Plus, I was able to run in the street and not deal with any snow or ice. Felt good the whole way, climbing the hill wasn't much of an effort, though I didn't try to run hard at any point. I think I did 5 over and backs and then on the 6th and final one I turned onto Medford St after going over and ran hard up Sackville to finish the day. Didn't feel terribly smooth or fast when trying to hammer up Sackville, but the street wasn't very clear either. Nice change of pace but pretty bored by the end. Also, I somehow got the name "Nuke LaLoosh" stuck in my head, which was incredibly annoying. | 8 |
| FRI | South End-Chinatown-Greenway with Jared. Got a slightly earlier start this morning and got to Mass and Memorial before meeting JMark. Jared didn't want to run on the river (music to my ears) so we ran into Boston along Mass Ave and took Columbus into the South End. Wound our way through the South End, over the Pike and into Chinatown, then took the Greenway to the locks and into Charlestown. Good route this morning, but there's snow everywhere and we were running slowly. Another 8 miles in 60+ minutes. I continue to be frustrated with running slowly and would really like to try cranking for a few miles, but the footing just doesn't allow for that. | 8 |
| THU | Another day off, too much work. | 0 |
| WED | Day off. Was dressed and ready to run early but started to feel overwhelmed by the amount of work I have to take care of, so instead of running I just headed to work early. I suppose that's the way it goes sometimes, though it stinks. | 0 |
| TUE | Harvard Sq-Broadway with JMark. Met Jared along the river and did the same route out Mass Ave and back along Broadway as last week. I wasn't in a great mood at the start of the run and probably would have talked myself out of the run if I hadn't been meeting Jared. It was snowing a bit but footing wasn't too bad. Felt better by the end of the run, the exercise seemed to help my mood. | 8 |
| MON | Day off. Absolutely frigid this morning and I thought that waiting until later in the day would be a good idea. Wound up working right through the day though, and had no motivation after work. | 0 |
| SUN | Davis-Bike Path, same route as last weekend. Woke up earlier than normal for a Sunday but didn't have much motivation to run. After wasting time for 2 hours I headed out for a run at 8:30. Really wanted to go short but managed to make myself run to Davis Square and from there just followed the usual route home. I kept telling myself that to enjoy running this summer I need to put in runs like this in the winter. About 14 degrees this morning so I wore pants again, but I think I could have made it in shorts. Tried to pick up the pace once I got to Mass Ave, but wasn't able to stay focused. Also, the sidewalks were slippery in places and crossing streets sometimes meant navigating a snowbank, both of which killed any rhythm I had going. 93 minutes for the run, which is borderline embarassing. | 12 |
Day |
Round Up |
Miles |
| Week 09 01-16 - 01-22 | Back to running every day this week but I still don't feel like I'm getting in great shape. Dealing with snowy/icy conditions all week has made footing less than ideal but I'm not even close to sniffing 7:00 pace on these runs. Trying to not get frustrated, but I feel like I'm putting in good work and would like to see some benefit from it. Nothing I can do, however, except keep working. January Miles : 143 | 53 |
| SAT | Docks-Greenway. Up and out the door early this morning, but just for a basic six mile run. Not a lot of problems with footing but it was pretty cold. Didn't feel like dealing with it, so I just ran in pants. Felt good enough but still not great. | 6 |
| FRI | River with Bernie, JMark, BH, DSmith, Will and Chorney. Started snowing early this morning and Kathryn had a snow day so I was able to get out the door at 6:30 and meet Bernie at Longfellow at 6:45. We headed up the river which had somewhat decent footing since the snow was covering most of the ice. Met JMark at BU and the rest of the guys at River Street. Couldn't pass up the chance to intimidate Harvey by running in shorts in a snowstorm and by the time we met I had ice forming on my quads. Had a spirited debate about the date of the shirtless lap, I managed to convince the masses that 2/13 was the best date and my threat to exploit the pants clause forced Brian to capitulate. (I'm sure that makes no sense to my 5 readers.) We crossed the river at Mass Ave (couldn't see Boston from Cambridge) and then Bernie, Chorney and I headed down river as the rest of the guys turned west. Ran down to Longfellow and took Cambridge St up to Staniford then back home over the locks. Was really looking forward to a warm shower once I got home, but it turned out that just putting on pants was enough to warm up my legs. Hard to take anything away from this run (other than maybe I should have gone to law school) since we were running 9:00 pace in the inch or two of snow on the ground. At least I put in the mileage. | 9 |
| THU | Run to Remember course. Got going at 6:45 again this morning, today the sidewalks were icy in patches since the temperature dropped to 25 degrees. Had to shuffle a few times but it was still early enough in the day that I could safely run in the road when needed. My right hip was sore and stiff at the start of the run but loosened up over the course of the run. Otherwise things felt good, though I'm sure I was running slowly again. The good part about these conditions is that they give me a rationale to explain my slowness. If it was the middle of the summer there'd be no explanation other than I'm in really bad shape. Also, I'm itching to see how a quicker pace feels, though I should probably still stick to basic mileage. I'm not willing to go to a track or treadmill and the footing outside isn't good enough for fast running, so I have no choice but to run easy. | 7 |
| WED | Back Bay loop. After rain last night I was afraid the roads would be iced over, but it was 35 degrees at 6am and everything was clear. Headed out right at 6:45 and felt good, for the most part. My right hip felt more sore than usual, especially at my lower back, but other than that things were good. Very few problem areas, but I did run on the sidewalks down Commonwealth instead of the Mall due to gigantic puddles. I ran down the MIT side of Memorial again, and eyeballed the half mile from 2.5-3 at 3:40. The worst footing on the route came by the park just before the Galleria where the sidewalk had been snowed over and turned into uneven ice under a bit of water. Should have taken a detour around it, but wound up walking for half a block. Ran hard up Green Street at the end and other than tight hamstrings felt decent. | 6 |
| TUE | Mass Ave-Broadway with JMark. Met Jared along the river this morning and we headed north on Mass Ave trying to find some decent footing. It was snowing and even though the flakes were tiny there was a decent accumulation throughout the run. We followed Mass Ave into Harvard Square and then turned onto Broadway and followed it back to the river. Route measured out to 8.5M online and since I continue to need the karma, I'm rounding down. My legs felt good, nothing was really bothering me though my left knee was sore before the run. About 20 degrees and was pretty comfortable in shorts but already looking forward to spring. | 8 |
| MON | Inman Square. Able to start a little earlier because of the holiday, headed out just a little after 6:30am. Felt good the whole way, the inside of my left knee was hurting when I woke up but felt fine when running. Probably sore from chasing Midge around in the snow again. I think it's time to start increasing the minimum distance of my runs, I'm handling the 4 and 5 milers easily now. Thermometer said 12 when I started but felt good in shorts, probably because it warmed up to 13 as I was running. | 5 |
| SUN | Davis-Bike Path, back along Mass Ave. Headed out just after 7:30 this morning on a route I haven't run in awhile. Was tempted to just run over and back on Bunker Hill for 90 minutes since there was no traffic and the road was nice and clear. Pushed on and took Highland Ave to Davis and then onto the Bike Path which was nice and clear, too. No real issues with footing and the traffic was light enough to jump in the street when needed. Instead of getting on the river I took Mass Ave all the way back to MIT, which was a bit shorter but the footing was fine. My legs felt good the whole way, but I was running slowly again, 93 minutes for just 12M. Ran solo this morning because the usual crew was going at 8:30 and I didn't want to wait. Also, those guys seem to only ever run 3 routes: river, marathon course and Sheatock Loop. The toggle switch was set to Sheatock Loop today and I'd rather shoot myself in the face than run laps in a parking lot. I had plenty of time to rant to myself about the SLoD choice and, at the risk of excommunication, will list the reasons why the Common is a better place to run: 1. better topology, there's a nice climb along Park Street at the Common, the only elevation changes on SLoD are speed bumps 2. better scenery, 3. on a similar note, there's more activity (people walking around) at the Common, keeps it interesting, 4. a 1.1M loop is better than a 0.7M loop, 5. Common is closer (not always true, but the meetingplace was Mass and Memorial this am), 6. don't have to worry about cars. End of rant. | 12 |
Day |
Round Up |
Miles |
| Week 08 01-09 - 01-15 | The week got off to a good start with a solid long run with JMark and I even managed to man up and run in the snowstorm on Wednesday. Got lazy/complacent in the aftermath of the storm though, and skipped Thursday and Friday instead of dealing with the snow. One of my goals was to run 13 out of 14 days, so to compensate I need to go 14 for 14 over the next two weeks. I feel like I'm getting back in shape, I certainly feel better during runs, but the watch still says I'm running slowly. No sense in pressing, though, I've only been back at it a short while. January Miles : 90 | 38 |
| SAT | Back Bay loop. Back on the horse this morning, headed out pretty early for this run. Thermometer said 12 so I headed out in pants but probably could have made it in shorts. Legs felt great after a 2 day lay off and was thinking that I'd try an uptempo mile along the river but the footing there was horrendous. Didn't have any real problems until I hit the river, I wound up running down the MIT side of the street, since that was plowed and salted. About 50 minutes this morning, still running slowly. | 6 |
| FRI | Convinced myself that the roads would be icy this morning and I would wait until the middle of the day. Unsurprisingly, I didn't. | 0 |
| THU | Wasn't motivated to deal with the snow this morning and my hip was somewhat sore from yesterday (probably a result of chasing Midge around the park). I slept an extra hour instead of getting up, so I guess I was tired. | 0 |
| WED | 3 laps of Boston Common. Kathryn had a snow day, so I was able to get a slighly earlier start, heading out into the snow at 6:15am. Ran the usual route over to the Common which was already being plowed. My legs felt okay, though I was certainly running slowly. Saw 8:25 for both laps, which is precisely 7:39.09090909 minutes per mile. It always takes a bit to remember the length of the Common and at first I thought it was 0.9M and I was running 9:00 pace. Thankfully I remembered the real distance before giving up and heading home. Always a lot of fun running around in a storm, I spent most of the run regretting my decision to wear pants. It was 30 degrees at the start and I was really warm the whole way, so shorts wouldn't have been too bad and probably would have put the fear of god into Harvey. | 7 |
| TUE | Fenway with JMark. Took off at 6:45 this morning and met up with Jared along the river. We didn't have much of a plan for where to run and as we were headed upriver towards BU I decided that running past Fenway would be fun. Took the standard route through Audobon Circle and headed down Brookline to Yawkey. Should have looped around the park, but just went up to Boylston and followed that all the way back to the Common. Standard route back from there, over the locks and parted ways with Jared at Chelsea Street. Felt pretty good the whole way, though my right hip and knee were tightening up at the end. Took a lot of ribbing from Jared this morning and not just because I was wearing shorts despite the thermometer saying 19. Glad I was able to mix it up a little bit and get Jared off the river today. Total time was 68 minutes which makes it a solid 9 miler (hopefully). | 9 |
| MON | Longfellow. Wanted to go short because I had been hurting so much yesterday but was getting sick of CTown loops. Ran over the locks and took Causeway and Staniford to Cambridge, then crossed over Longfellow and took Memorial to the bridge into Charlestown. Felt surprisingly good on the run and was tempted to head into Kendall Square as I was crossing the river, but resisted. Had to sprint through an intersection once to avoid getting hit by a car and my hamstring held up. Felt somewhat quick, actually. In the things to keep track of as I get in shape department, I weighed 176 lbs right after waking up this morning. | 4 |
| SUN | Watertown Bridge, starting from BU, with JMark. Saw Jared at the Alumni meet yesterday and we agreed to meet at 7:30am for a run today. Simple route this morning, headed up river to Watertown on the Cambridge side and back to the BU Bridge on the Boston side. Another dusting of snow on the ground but the footing wasn't slippery at all. Settled into a good pace, quicker than I've been running on my own, and I bored JMark with a long, rambling description of all of the bets I've had with Harvey. I was a little concerned going into the run because my right hip was really sore last night and stiff at the very start of the run. It loosened up after 2 minutes of running and nothing bothered me the rest of the way. I am certainly not in great shape as I was hurting at the very end and pretty wiped out the rest of the day, but we put in a solid 93 minutes. I had been convinced this was a 13M run, but both the mileage chart and online measurement say it's barely 12M. Ouch, I would have hoped that 7:45 pace wouldn't have taken so much effort. Maybe I can blame that on the snow. Didn't help to get home and not have much food in the house; after taking a shower headed to CostCo to stock up. Got a bad headache around noon that seemed to be mostly hunger/dehydration. | 12 |
Day |
Round Up |
Miles |
| Week 07 01-02 - 01-08 | A solid week, I was shooting for a 7M/day average and came up just short. Somehow got into a short/long routine without really meaning, but felt good on all the "long" runs. (It is a bit ridiculous that I'm calling a 10M my long run.) My hamstring was tight throughout, but thankfully my massage at Sheatock Sports Therapy really helped. Not 100% healed, but Friday was a much better run. January Miles : 52 | 46 |
| SAT | Charlestown Loop with Midge. Up early to get in a quick run before heading to the Alumni meet. Felt strange to be there spectating and not racing, breaking my streak of 9 straight years racing the 5k (and 8 straight years of scoring). Felt good during the run, the dusting of snow on the ground wasn't an issue, and I couldn't help but wonder what I would have been able to do had I raced. Realistically, I couldn't have competed and think there's a decent chance I would have screwed up my hamstring trying to run fast. | 4 |
| FRI | River with Terry, Bernie, Dobbie, JMark and | 10 |
| THU | Charlestown Loop. Everyone was running a little late today, so I figured I'd keep alternating short-long days. Same old story, felt decent early and gradually felt my right leg tighten up. | 4 |
| WED | Murphy's Law. Out the door with Kathryn and Nate at 6:45 and felt pretty good at the start. Took the usual Docks route and then Summer Street but didn't bring a watch so no time on the way out or back. Hip and hamstring were tight again, not as bad as they have been but enough to make me still keep the pace easy. Doesn't feel like I could safely run fast right now. | 8 |
| TUE | Charlestown Loop. Everybody was running a bit late this morning and I didn't get started until after 7am. Decided to keep it short and easy this morning and try for an 8 miler tomorrow. My right hip was sore at the start but my hamstring didn't start to bother me until the second half of the run. I've neglected to mention that after Saturday's run I got my stretch rope out of the basement and have been using that to stretch my hamstring post-run. Seems to be helping, it certainly works better than any of my standard hamstring stretches. | 4 |
| MON | Inman Square. Was pretty much ready to run once Kathryn and Nate left, and my legs were feeling pretty good despite staying up to watch the horrible St. Louis-Seattle game last night. (That game, incidentally, bumped the odds of Brian doing a shirtless Reservoir lap in February from 68.75% to 93.75%.) Felt pretty good though my hamstring is still tight enough that I don't dare try extending my stride or accelerating quickly. Temperatures were back to normal, 30 degrees and a long sleeve shirt with hat and gloves. | 6 |
| SUN | Out and back to BU Track. Headed over to the BU Indoor Track around 9:15 to watch BH and TPS race a 3k at 10am. The sky was overcast but it was warmer than yesterday, letting me start the year off with back to back runs in shorts and a tshirt. Even the rain over the final 20 minutes wasn't a big deal. Got to the track in 37 minutes and though I was starting to get worried I was going to be late I had plenty of time to stand around before their race started. Only waited a few minutes after their race ended before heading back home, but watching those guys run fast only added to my motivation to get back into shape. On the way out I took the locks to the Common and followed Commonwealth but on the way back I jumped onto the river and crossed over to the Cambridge side at Mass Ave. 37 and change on the way out and 36 and change on the way back, plus 2 laps around the outside of the track trying to stay loose before the start of the race. This was a solid 10M run, measuring it online gives 5.14M on the way out and 5.08M on the way back, which meshes well with my 7:15 split along the river on the way back. Happy to see Brian get a PR, since the regular season portion of our NFL bet wrapped up with a disastrous loss for him later in the day. | 10 |
Day |
Round Up |
Miles |
| Week 06 12-26 - 01-01 | Not really a great week. Got off to a good start with a 13M long run, but then had to deal with hamstring and motivation issues the rest of the week. I think the motivation will rebound once the hamstring improves and running becomes more enjoyable. Even easy runs are a bit of an effort right now. 2010 was a great year for me personally, but not even close to good for running. Had a below average race in Houston, then struggled to get motivated, ran decently well before Nate was born and then barely ran through the fall and into the winter. I intend to right the ship in 2011 and have a rough plan for doing it: 1. Spend a solid 6 weeks of just basic running. The goal is to run 13 out of every 14 days and get above 70MPW. 2. Introduce hard running over the next 4 weeks, starting in mid February, by just taking 1 standard 8-12M run each week and making a point of pushing the whole way, and possibly running part of my long run hard, if I feel like it. 3. In mid March start more structured workouts and possibly step onto a track. My initial goal is to run well at the BAA 5k, and right now the definition of running well is a course PR (15:15 from 2009). January Miles : 6 | 34 |
| SAT | Shortened Run to Remember. I guess I was awake early this morning, as the streets were deserted at 8am. Add to that temperatures in the upper 40s and this was a great morning to be out running. I'm not sure the last time I was able to start off the year by running in a tshirt and shorts. Skipped the out and back to the World Trade Center, cutting off about a mile. I'm not really sure why, I didn't feel like running out that way, and my hamstring was still bothering me so I figured keeping it shorter couldn't hurt. | 6 |
| FRI | Day off. No good excuses, just lazy today. I look at it as resting up ahead of my New Year's resolutions. December Miles : 116 | 0 |
| THU | Day off. Long day of finally travelling back to Boston. We landed around 11am and by the time I finished chores and did a little work the day had gotten away from me. | 0 |
| WED | LaFayette. Final run with Nick, we're flying back to Boston early tomorrow morning. The plan was to start at 8am since today's another working day for me, but my reliable alarm clock Nate decided to sleep in, so I woke up about 2 minutes before Nick got to the door. Rushed to get ready but actually felt okay throughout the run. A bit warmer than it has been and I felt very comfortable in shorts. Same route as Monday, but this time I felt a lot better, I guess the day off helped. We were only around 6:50 along Lake Drive at the end, but it was a pretty easy pace. Tacked on an extra few minutes with Nick at the end to bump this up to a solid 8M. | 8 |
| TUE | Day off. The plan was to run on my own because Nick was going to do a tempo, so I was thinking I'd put in just an easy four miles. We were supposed to fly back to Boston last night but changed our flights in fear of the east coast blizzard, so today was a work day for me. Should have run right away but thought I'd sneak out at lunch when it would be a bit warmer. Of course, random chores kept cropping up and I never got a chance to go and eventually lost motivation. A day completely off is probably just as good, if not better, than an easy run at this point. | 0 |
| MON | LaFayette. Another Lakefront run this morning with Nick. It was a little bit colder than the past few days so I thought I'd see if wearing pants helped my hamstring loosen up at all. It didn't. Today was definitely the worst I've felt since I started running semi-seriously again around Thanksgiving. I had low energy, just worn down in general, plus I was getting sick of limping along with my screwed up hamstring and hip. We were originally thinking of a longer run but I ran out of willpower and had to turn back at LaFayette. Measured the route afterwards and it turned out to be 7.5, which I'm rounding down to compensate for some runs I've rounded up recently. | 7 |
| SUN | Bender plus Good Hope add-on. Nick came over at 8:30 this morning and we headed out on the standard Bender loop. To be sure we didn't miss any distance we headed up to Lake Drive first then ran over to Capitol and down to Wilson. I felt decent enough on the run, but certainly wasn't able to finish with a few faster miles as Nick and I had originally talked about. It took a bit of an effort just to get down to 6:40s for the final mile. Still, putting in 90 minutes is a good run for me right now and hopefully I can keep building up my long run. Hard to believe I'm 28 today, that's nearly sub-master age. | 13 |
Day |
Round Up |
Miles |
| Week 05 12-19 - 12-25 | Rough start to the week because of the weekend's sickness, but I recovered pretty well and put together a decent string of runs. My right hamstring is still bothering me though and really affecting my ability to run smoothly and efficiently. I'm really forcing it at times to get through runs. I keep mentioning how much work there is to do before I'm back in shape, but I think once my hamstring is back to normal I'll feel like I'm in much better shape. Putting in mileage is always a bit easier with Nick around, so running with him on the 24th was nice, even if he was blowing my doors off on the climbs. December Miles : 88 | 30 |
| SAT | Breadstore. Headed out early on Christmas morning in advance of a busy day. Was hoping to get fresh bagels later in the day, so decided to check whether any stores were open. Ran first to Einstein's, which was closed, then headed out to Bruegger's on Silver Spring (also closed.) Ran on the backstreets and wound up taking Marlborough out to Silver Spring. After being confused about where I was for a few blocks I realized I was running the old Breadstore route from high school. Headed back to my parents house via Marlborough-Cumberland-Morris-Beverly. Tried a single stride at the end and my hamstring was far too tight, I was limping slowly along instead of actually striding. A solid 42 minutes for what turned out to be nearly exactly 6M. | 6 |
| FRI | Lakefront hills with Nick. Nick came by at 8:30 and we headed down to the lakefront for an easy workout. Did the usual route of winding up and down the bluff, running up Snake Hill, St Mary's, LaFayette, St Mary's, Snake Hill and Lincoln Memorial. We kept it very easy between climbs, so it wasn't a continuous hard effort, more of an easy run with short bursts of running hard. Nick routinely dropped me and I really had to labor on each hill. My right hamstring was tight most of the way and made it tough to open up my stride and run on my toes. It did loosen up as the run went on, but my form never felt quite right. | 9 |
| THU | Charlestown loop with Midge. It snowed a bit overnight so there was half an inch or so to run through at times. A little bit slippery but no real issues. My right hamstring was really tight at the start and didn't ever really loosen up. I limped through most of the run but managed to climb up Sackville without any problems. I certainly wasn't going fast on the climb, though; Midge turned around and gave me an exasperated look, she clearly wanted to run faster. | 4 |
| WED | Long run on the river. Headed out to meet the guys on the river after Nate left for daycare. Made it all the way to Strawberry's again, which was much further than I was expecting. Met TPS, Harvey, Pat Callahan, Ian Nurse and Bernie and ran back down the river with them. Crossed over at Science Museum and headed back up the Boston side. Finally decided to turn around, but Pat convinced me to go a bit further and turn around with him. We looped around the Esplanade and took the footbridge to Cambridge St. Ran straight up Cambridge with Pat and finally turned off at Sudbury, running down to Haymarket and back across the locks. Went 80 minutes total, a bit further than I was expecting, but felt good enough the whole way. Got caught up in the conversation and the company this morning. (After missing so many days over the weekend, I'm abandoning running days tally. It was getting embarassing.) | 11 |
| TUE | Day off. Probably should have run this morning, but my stomach was still unsettled and I was worried about having problems mid-run. Plus, it snowed overnight and I was thinking it would be easier to run in the middle of the day. That was true, but I didn't manage to get out the door. 5/9 | 0 |
| MON | Day off. Went to bed feeling bad last night and woke up with an upset stomach. Apparently my stomach wasn't ready for a full meal last night. Decided to play it safe and give myself another day off. 5/8 | 0 |
| SUN | Day off. Was only able to eat a bagel and some crackers yesterday and was far too weak to even think about running today. My stomach was still upset throughout the day and I didn't eat a real meal until dinner. 5/7 | 0 |
Day |
Round Up |
Miles |
| Week 04 12-12 - 12-18 | A decent way to restart the comeback, did a good job of getting out the door every day, up until I got sick. Definitely have a lot of work ahead of me, but it feels good to be getting at it again. December Miles : 58 | 33 |
| SAT | Day off. Got violently ill last night, I guess I finally caught what Nate's had the past few days. Barely got out of bed today. 5/6 | 0 |
| FRI | River with Harvey. Another early start since Nate's still sick and not going to daycare. Headed out at 6:30 and ran up the river until bumping into Harvey where Strawberry's used to be (it's a Starbucks now.) Pretty cold early on but I continue to build up my tolerance by running in shorts. Another run with sore hamstrings, felt pretty herky-jerky running alone but smooth enough when I was with Harvey (he may disagree.) We ran together down to MOS and then I headed home alone. Hit an hour on the nose, didn't check any splits but was clearly running faster with Harvey than without. When trying to figure out how far this was my first impulse was 9M, but I'm running much slower than I'm used to and decided I'd better measure. Not much further than 8M. 5/5 | 8 |
| THU | Navy Yard with Midge, then Inman Square. I was up earlier because Nate's sick, and since he's not going to daycare I was able to run earliier. Headed out with Midge before 6am and ran through the Navy Yard with her. Warmer than yesterday but still pretty chilly along the water. Dropped Midge off at home and then headed out solo. My hamstring was tight again in the Navy Yard but I felt better right after dropping off Midge and though maybe I had warmed up. Turned out to just be residual heat from being inside, and my hamstrings stayed tight the whole run. I might have to resort to wearing pants soon, though I really need to build up my cold weather tolerance. Another so-so run, it feels good to be back out there, but I'm still very far from actually feeling like there's a purpose to what I'm doing. 4/4 | 7 |
| WED | CTown loop with Midge. Another 7am start, I had been planning on a short one to rest up after 2 big days. The thermometer said 17 when I got started, it didn't feel that cold but it was bad. Was originally going to wear pants, but then remembered that in order to force Brian to run around the Reservoir shirtless in February I'll have to do the long run in shorts. So, wore shorts today to start building up my tolerance. I didn't learn much from yesterday, as my legs were freezing running along the water. Probably didn't help my hamstrings, either, as they were both decently sore/tight the whole way. Midge was raring to go the whole way and really killed me on the climb up Sackville. It seems like climbing hills is the hardest thing for my hamstrings to handle right now. 3/3 | 4 |
| TUE | Murphy's Law. Same as yesterday, out the door around 7am after helping get Nate ready for daycare. Right hamstring was really tight and never really loosened up. I did manage to progress from obvious limp to no limp over the course of the run, though. Much colder than yesterday, low 30s, so running along the water might not have been a great idea. I guess my route selection is rusty. | 8 |
| MON | Back Bay loop. Helped Kathryn get Nate ready for daycare and headed out for a run at 7am. Nice weather for running, low 50s with maybe a hint of a mist, and I was really happy to be getting back at it. Decided that I wanted to see how it felt to run hard, so once I turned onto Memorial I picked it up and dealt with a tight hamstring and hip flexor, both on my right side. Managed a 5:40 and wasn't limited by my legs or my lungs, was subconciously holding back to try and not injure myself on my first real day back. I think I was on pace for something faster (I think the "3" is really faded as I completely missed it) but really struggled up the "hill" at Longfellow. Didn't feel that great the rest of the way, but my hip flexor stopped hurting as soon as I stopped trying to run fast. The comeback begins again. | 6 |
| SUN | Long day finishing the project. Everything is all wrapped up now. | 0 |
Day |
Round Up |
Miles |
| Week 03 12-05 - 12-11 | This week didn't turn out as planned. Had a nice run with a good group on Sunday and made it through 10M without much of an issue. The rest of the week, however, was eaten up by the CS 265 project. Thankfully that's ending, so I no longer have an excuse to be out of shape. December Miles : 25 | 10 |
| SAT | Day off. | 0 |
| FRI | Day off. | 0 |
| THU | Day off. | 0 |
| WED | Day off. | 0 |
| TUE | Day off. | 0 |
| MON | Day off. | 0 |
| SUN | JP with BH, Dan Smith, Wayne, Prindiville, Paul and Colman. | 10 |
Day |
Round Up |
Miles |
| Week 02 11-28 - 12-04 | December Miles : 15 | 28 |
| SAT | Day off. | 0 |
| FRI | River with Dan Smith and The Defecator. | 9 |
| THU | Day off. | 0 |
| WED | I feel like I ran today, but I can't remember what I did. It was probably a Back Bay loop. | 6 |
| TUE | Day off. November Miles : 58 | 0 |
| MON | Charlestown Loop. This was Nate's first full day at daycare and Kathryn's first day back at work. Got up around 5:30 and had everything packed and ready to go at 6:45. Got out for my run shortly after that, kept it easy around Charlestown. Hoping to be able to put in some morning runs again, now that I'm back on a schedule. | 4 |
| SUN | 57 minutes in the Fells with Midge. Nearly able to put in an hour but didn't really want to tack on at the end. Just the usual wandering around without much of a route today. Headed back to Bellevue down the hill from Panther Cave and the rocks were hard to navigate because the sun was in my eyes. Got to the bottom, said aloud to Midge "We made it" and immediately rolled my ankle. | 9 |
Day |
Round Up |
Miles |
| Week 01 11-21 - 11-27 | First serious week back, I should have more free time going into the winter and hopefully will be able to get back into decent shape again. For now I'm just trying to run regularly and get to a place where I can run hard occasionally without risking injury. November Miles : 45 | 45 |
| SAT | Day off. Early flight back to Boston and a lot of errands to run once we got home. My legs could probably use a break, trying to be smart about this comeback. | 0 |
| FRI | Lakefront with Nick. Wound up waiting a bit for Nick due to some confusion about where I was staying, but we headed out before 9 for this one. I was insanely sore at the start and barely loosened up. Both hamstrings were really tight, probably should have stretched a bit after yesterday's run. A bit more than 6M in 47 minutes, enough to offset the short 13M yesterday. A bit slower pace today, just barely under 7:00 at the end. | 6 |
| THU | Traditional Thanksgiving run with Nick along the Parkway. Headed over to Nick's place around 8am and we settled into the usual routine. I had tried to weasel out of this run a few weeks ago but Nick reminded me of all the times he'd hung in with me while out of shape, so I owed him. Was looking forward to pushing myself again and got that today. Just short of 13M, I stopped around 87 minutes and couldn't talk myself into the extra 3 minutes. We were really moving at the end, I caught a couple sub-6:40 splits. | 13 |
| WED | Ctown Loop with Midge. Up somewhat early and headed out with Midge before taking her to the kennel. I was really tired but wanted to make sure I got my legs loosened up before grinding with Nick tomorrow. | 4 |
| TUE | River with TPS. Finished the draft of my CS265 paper before the run, glad the class is winding down. Ran over to MIT, met Terry at the track then ran up to River on the Cambridge side and back on the Boston side. Was pretty worn down over the final few miles and even saw an 8:0x split on the river. Can't remember the last time I've seen one of those (I've run plenty of 8 minute miles, but never time those runs.) | 10 |
| MON | 42 minutes to Midas on Rte 9. Headed out along the Riverway in the middle of the day to pick up Kathryn's car. Wound up being a bit further than I had expected and my legs were definitely wobbly by the end. Had I been in better shape, and had more time, it would have been nice to head up to the Reservoir. | 6 |
| SUN | 43 minutes in the Fells with Midge. Did the usual routine of getting to Bellevue a bit before 8am but this time followed the blue trail and discovered a new area on the other side of South Border Road. Enjoyed getting onto some different trails for a change. Midge is clearly in better shape than I am, she would climb up the hills with ease, then turn around to watch me struggle. Legs a bit tired after just 40 minutes, time to start getting back in shape. | 6 |
