The wrath of the Decker winds

First off - I can hear the wind howling outside my window now.  I do not want to hear the wind howling next Saturday night.  I hope the wind is not quite as brisk for the Decker race.

I blew off the long run on Sat AM since I did not feel great when I got up at 4:30 AM.  Went back to bed and slept until 10:30.  It was kind of a nasty grey day - the kind I hate and that did not improve my mood.  Did some errands and just kind of wasted the day away.  Rode Riley and he was fantastic.  You know things aren't looking good in my running life when I don't have too many good things to say about the running but the riding is good.  Made a really good veggie pizza and salad for dinner, watch a James Bond movie and went to bed at 9:45.  Took a Melatonin and Sleepy time tea to make sure I slept.

The goofy dog woke me up at 8am - obviously about to wet the dog bed so I got up and let her out to pee...it was chilly and windy but sunny - good day for running.  Had some water and a bagel, got my water bottle, ipod, arm warmers and gloves and set off.  At 973 I decided to run the direction of the race.  That proved to be a VERY wise decision.

I like, no love, the Decker Loop they use for the race.  Sundays are a good day to run it because there is less traffic.  If you don't like traffic or are intimidated by it you won't like the loop when you don't have the road to your self.  I find the drivers very courteous compared to people that live in Austin.   I braved the hills on 973, which after you run them a few times don't seem all that bad and when I turned onto Loyola (or whatever it's called east of decker lane) the wind hit me full force.  I just sucked it up and made a mental noted that the start of the race could be a bit windy and the finish would be brutal.  When I got to Decker lane, I stopped for a quick potty break and water refill.  Note - they have clean bathrooms at the gas station on the corner.

I turned onto Decker lane going north and realized the wind seemed to be blowing from the west.  I had assumed that I would be pushing into a head wind the whole way to Lindell.  It wasn't bad at all.  At Lindell, I was able to pick up the pace a little thanks to the tailwind, and that stayed with me the whole way home.  The little rollers on Lindell, Blue Bluff and Bloor aren't bad at all and the one fairly steep one on Blue Bluff is short.  It was helpful running the race course because it puts it into perspective.  I pushed the last couple of miles home and ended up at 16 miles.

Next week my A goal is 1:37 - that is a stretch given the nature of the course and my best effort at 3M is 1:35.  My B goal is 1:40.  My C goal is doing a water stop!!!

After this kind of sketchy week, I know I need a fairly easy run on Thurs, an off day on Friday and a easy shake out 4-5 miler on Sat.  Sunday will include a 2-3 mile warm up well over dressed to get my legs good and warm.

LAZY TURKEY DAY

I'm not one for overindulging on Thanksgiving anymore.  I don't have any family within 1500 miles and they already celebrated Thanksgiving 5 weeks ago.  I'm also not into crashing other people's family get togethers anymore so it's just another day.  It's not even an extra day off.  Just happens to fall on my day off work.  I had considered running right after work...when I got home I decided I would rather just sack out.  Slept from 8:30-3pm - my alarm had gone off at 1pm!  Finally dragged myself out of bed and rolled my calves and stretched and headed out the door for a progressive run.  As I was shuffling along in my first mile, I decided today was not the day for that.  So I decided just to run 8 miles at whatever pace seemed comfortable.  My foot was having a bad day and my quads felt heavy.  I ran an out and back on the Decker Loop - on the not so good roads.  As well as focusing on pushing the up hills and running easy on the downs, I paid attention to where the best parts of the roads where.  Miles 4-8 has some kinda bad sections.  The best parts are where I'll be running next weekend.  At mile 6.5 I had a weird sinking spell - just ran out of gas.  I stopped for a minute or too and then was able to finish up no problem.

Took a ice bath and made a tasty stirfry that did not have turkey, cranberries, corn bread or sweet potatoes in it and went to the barn to ride Riley.  He was pretty good - it was humid and he has enough fur to keep him warm in Minnesota so he worked up a good sweat.  Am considering clipping a little of it off.

Currently I'm feeling good - not stuffed like everyone else in America.  Time for a little TV - not football though!

Hot and cold

Feeling considerably better despite a lack of quality sleep today. Did the following w/o on the track - 400 x 4 at 5k pace w 200 recovery, 800 x 2 at 10k pace, 1 mile at HMGP with 400 recovery and 1 mile at MGP. Nailed the whole thing. As always, Jason has a great sense of pace.
Team Rogue North seems to be getting pretty pumped up about CIM and it's fun to be a part of it.
Felt pretty cold after the workout despite a nice hot shower at the gym and a big bowl of soup for dinner. I'm in my work office now with the little space heater cranked and I'm feeling like a nap might be in order! It is really pretty chilly in the jail and this seems to be the toastiest spot.
Not running the Turkey Trot. I'm going to keep my priorities in place and focus on sleep on Thursday over racing. I'll do my own progressive pace in my 'hood.
Next up - the Decker Half Marathon!!

Allergies

Not sure what's bugging me but it appears that the usual allergy suspects are low and the air quality is good.  I am dying a slow death of sneezing and a running (like a faucet) nose.  Today I took some benadryl, Zyrtec,Flonase with minimal effect.  Am considering calling in sick for work.  I hate to do it because it seems like such a lame ass reason to call in.  However, if you are an police officer or inmate you are hoping I do.  I was mighty cranky last night!  I'll give it one more hour and decide.  Thankfully it's a day off from running and hopefully I'll be better tomorrow.

I don't follow football but....

65 to 21???  What's that?

Anyway, moving on...had a relaxed 5 miler with Silver dog tonight and actually felt pretty good.  Rolled my legs and stretched this am and did a quick roll and stretch before I ran.

Things I learned this weekend.  20+ miles ain't all that bad no matter if you don't have the best day.  It's just one foot in front of the other.  Soaking at Barton Springs works.  Getting enough sleep is critical - I slept 8+ hours each of the last 3 nights and I feel good.  My diet wasn't great - you just don't say no when an 80 some year old offers you dessert - you just take a smallish portion.

After my feeling sorry for myself last week, I think I have things in line again and my priorities in line.  Sleep, run, eat, work, ride the horse.

Nope - you couldn't bust me Steve!

That was a tough workout.  The worst part for me was the part thru Barton Hills.  I was not running fast, I got lost, added an extra mile and it seemed like I was the only one out there.

I was a few seconds slow on the MGP part but not enough for me not to say I nailed it!!  The last time I tried extended time at 3:20 pace I blew up bad.  Today I did the mile and the MGP and was still able to make it back in one piece to Rogue.  My foot is no worse.  My cold is no worse.  All good.  Had a good soak in Barton Springs where the Austin Fit folks were having Mimosas.  

The best part is that I have absolutely no plans for the rest of the day and plan to sleep in tomorrow.

Thanks to all the Austin Marathon folks that gave me a boost on LAB in the final mile of MGP!!

CV

I worked my L foot with the golf ball all night.  Definate improvement in how it felt.  I cut the CV workout short and just did 3 in an effort to save my foot.  Not feeling great about how this whole thing is going to work out but I'll keep trying.  I can suck up a lot of discomfort in a race but for another 5 months - I don't know.  Plan is to see how Sat. goes.  I'm going to give it 100% effort.  If my foot blows up during or after the run then I may have to get on my bike or some sort of cross training for a while.

This CV workout went way better this time.  I was slow on all of my 2000's but Karen was OK with that since we are doing them on the road.

I am going to buy a new pair of long run shoes today or tomorrow.  I think I need fresh ones for the long runs - mine have 250+ miles on them and if I recall my last ones, that's about when my foot flared up again.

Easy run

First run since Friday. We did an easy 6 mile group run from the Far West HEB. I kind of like that loop - easy not to get lost. Traffic was kinda crazy so we wore cute pink glow bands on our wrists. I felt pretty good - ran slowly with the group for the first 2 miles and then ran my own pace ahead of them for the rest. Feeling OK - can't say great since my foot is still uncomfortable. Not too bad though - wasn't hobbling at all. Going to try and leave work at 4:45 AM on Thurs so I can do the AM CV workout.
My goals this week include eating well, hydrating and tending to my aches and pains so I'm at my best for Sat.

Rest days

I ended up taking Sat, Sun and Mon off.  Tomorrow is an easy run.  Hopefully all that will put me in a better place physically.  My foot feels better but I am nervous about it.  I like the colder weather for running but I hate how it makes me feel otherwise.  Stiff, sore and sluggish.  Less motivation to go outside too.

On a good note - I wore my Boston 2008 jacket this weekend for the first time since April 2008.  Woo, hoo!!

Oh yeah...did I mention that Riley escaped from his stall last night just before he was to come home and I spent 30 min running around the expo ctr trying to find, then catch him.  Fortunately it ended well and he is no worse for his adventure!!

Having a plan...and sticking to it

This weekend I was at a horse show.  Have to say, I wasn't sorry I didn't have to get up and run in the howling wind and cold on Sat.  However, the cold made riding difficult yesterday.  I was cold and felt stiff, I just couldn't get in synch with my horse Riley and he did the best he could with what I was doing.

I slept almost 12 hours last night...what a treat and I wasn't about to get up when it was really cold.

Today was a new day at the show.  I had a plan - ride forward and keep my leg on no matter what - and I stuck to it.  My coach asked what had happened overnight that I was riding so much better and I listed off a bunch of goofy reasons but I think I just trusted that Riley was going to do his part so I just needed to do mine.

2nd and 3rd classes were spectacular - I rode fairly aggressively to the fences and took a couple of risks - they paid off.  He didn't win anything because he is a little ragged between the lines still but the jumps were great.  One guy said he cleared one 3' fence by close to 2 feet.  That's not a great thing but that's just Riley, he's really careful.  It felt smooth though and I wasn't been launched out of the tack like I was on Saturday.  A long day but fun.  No run, I'll do something really easy tomorrow afternoon.

Home, sweet, home!

I'm going to a horse show this weekend so I needed to get the long run done today.  Did a fairly harmless quality workout Thurs night then hopped up at 6AM to get ready.  I was scheduled to do 20miles so I drove to the almost 1/2 way point and dropped off some water.  I knew when I got up  it was going to be a tough 20 miler.  My left foot was not feeling so good.  I taped it up good and snug and headed out the door.  At mile 1 I seriously considered turning around but when I did, my foot felt OK so I turned back around and hobbled for another few miles until it loosened up.  I decided to run to 5 miles and if I still felt bad I'd turn around and call it a day at 10miles.  At the 5 mile mark I was feeling fine.  My foot was sore but I had managed to even my gait out.  At mile 8.9 (the entrance to the Expo Center) I stopped and refilled my water bottle.  Things were looking pretty good so I decided to continue on and finish the full Decker Race Loop.  I ended up running the full loop plus 4 miles so ended up with 16 miles.  Not 20 but the last couple of miles had me reverting back to my hobbling gait so it's probably for the best.  I was never so glad to be home.

I'll be working on my foot all week so it feels better by next weekend for whatever awaits us at the soul (sole in my case!) buster.

Now off to get horse show stuff together and head off for that.  Ahhh...a weekend of sitting pretty with the horse doing the hard work...not me!!

Feeling fine

So I got a reprieve from the track workout tonight and just did a 5 mile recovery run. My hamstrings have been tight this week - from the downhills on the Sunday race - and I figured I'd be shuffling a little tonight. Not at all. Ran 5 miles easy and felt good the whole way.

Now I need to stop the food rewards I have been giving myself for my good race on Sunday before I turn in to the Michelin (wo)man.

Amazingly, my left heel is no worse for the wear after Sunday - I was fully prepared for it to be screaming for a few days. Not at all - in fact it seems somewhat better.

Have our quality workout on Thursday and then I will be running a solo 20 miler on Friday. I have one last horse show on Sat and don't want to be mentally and physically tired for that. 20 miles alone ain't gonna be great but I'll drop water at the 10 mile point to refill the water bottle I'll be carrying. I'm going to try and get on the road before the wind picks up - at least I'll have a tail wind on the way back.

Parrot Predictor

So yesterday after I entered the warm up/cool down miles I didn't bother to time, on to Breaking the Tape, I noticed my parrot predictor improved my marathon time to 2:49.  So I emailed them to find out why that was happening and it turns out the program calculates the fastest 26.2 miles you run each week and that is your marathon predicted time.  Interesting.  So when I run 4 miles in 00:00, the program is impressed and uses those miles.  The guy says they will add a filter to correct that!  Interesting thing is that my correct parrot predictor and the Macmillan predictor are identical and they seem to work on entirely different premises.

Predictions

OK - this week my parrot predictor says 3:23:xx and when I plug in my 10 mile race time in to the McMillan Calculator, it says 3:23:xx too. Looks like I'm headed in the right direction!

YES I CAN!!!!

That is my mantra for the day!!  Awesome 10 mile race.  My plan was to run my own race and not worry about anything except effort.  It paid off huge.  Time 1:12:36 pace 7:16 place 3rd age group.   Last year's time 1:17:03.  I'm not going to bore anyone with a lengthy race report because there isn't much to say.  I plain ran with the same effort from start to finish.

It was GREAT to see a bunch of people from the 2008 Boston group - Jim, John, Rennie, Mike, Scott, Geezer.  I had a great time and actually enjoyed myself today.

Weather - perfect!!!!!!!!!!

Everyone's doing great

Meesha has been off her meds for 24hrs and was tying to steal my lunch from me today.  She's not eating tons but she's acting like her normal self now.  I will gradually start her meds back on Monday and see how she does.

Riley is doing great - he has now stepped up to the next level!  I was going to blow off the show next week but now that he is comfortably and confidently jumping 3 feet I am going to take him.  I had a couple of rides this week that made me almost want to give up the running and just do the riding again.  It is tough for me to do both well.  So I put most of my effort into running well and just do what I can with the riding.  I can't describe in words that satisfaction I get from helping a horse achieve as much of their potential as possible - especially older and sometimes misunderstood horses.  Thus I will do the long run on my own on Saturday afternoon or on Friday.

I took Silver dog to Decker Lake for a easy pre race 5 miler and she ran the mileage with ease and swam a bunch in the lake.  

Decker lake does not qualify as trail running but I did run face first into a spider web on the grass trails.  It would be cool if they could build trails connecting the Lake, Expo Center and power plant.

Haven't quite decided what to do with the race tomorrow - no matter what I do, I will be conservative at the start and build up once I get to Exposition.  I did that last year and that worked really well.

Is this fantastic weather or what???

Tempo loops

As it is dark in the morning and evening, Karen now has this awesome little 2 mile loop we do our tempo runs on.  No way we can possibly get lost so there is no straining to see street signs.  We did a 4 mile tempo run with 2 mile up and down.  Jason has been in Karen's group for years and has the same general goal time so we run together quite a bit.  His goal is 3:20 as well but we have both kinda informally agreed to start stepping up the pace a little so we are training at 3:15 paces.  We are not struggling to get it done and actually have to slow down just a hair so we are not going way too fast. The cool part is that on each lap we did the first mile (mostly downhill) slower than the second which was mostly gradually up.  It is great to have a consistant person to have to run with on the quality workouts.  We are the 3:20 train of 2!!

I am pretty sure that if I stop giving Meesha the thyroid meds, she will start eating again.  She is eating barely anything but did wake me up this morning acting hungry.  She has 1 tsp of kitten food and about 5 cat treats for breakfast.  Last night she ate nothing but I forced her to have a little high calorie cat supplement.  I'm taking her to the vet today and discussing how we will resolve this problem.  I am not happy about this situation (and I'm sure Meesha isn't) and dealt with a non-eating horse a year ago that ended up dying because he couldn't eat.  That is NOT going to happen if I can help it.

Windy

It was warm, windy and humid today.  I had a stellar run.  I felt rested and strong.  Silver dog came along and enjoyed herself a lot.  I am impressed by her improving fitness - running between 7:50 and 8:10 is not a problem for her.  I used to have to run a 9 min mile for her to be able to keep up.  I'll have to start her on some quality workouts...might take her to the run for the rovers race - when ever that is!

There is nothing better than a good run to improve one's mood.

Cat is looking better

The cat was actually standing up when I got home, ate some tuna and was eager to go outside for a while.  Looking more like her usual self.  The dog was wild - maybe she needs some of the cat's medication!  What she really needs is a good run - 5miles tonight and it looks to be nice and humid - will tire her out nicely.

Terrible night at work...I'll sum it up by saying the last 2 inmates I saw should have known better and behaved in such a way I was embarrassed for them.  If we are all lucky, they will lose their jobs.

Have a happy day!

Stressful days

The time change sucks for those of us that run in the evening. The whole run was dark and of course I got lost. I just have to remember to bring my headlamp with me. Thank goodness, I had decided to run the Run for the Water this weekend as a substitue for the hill workout because it was a crappy workout d/t me being lost. Karen had already said to take it easy tonight if we were racing so cutting it a mile short didn't matter much. On Sunday it will be light and there will be plenty of people to follow. My goal will be to attack the hills and follow the race plan. I'm not concerned about time or overall placing.
The time change affects everything for me...I'm used to driving home in the dark...now it's light. I'm used to waking up in the afternoon with the sun still high in the sky. Not anymore. It's stressing me out a little but I'll work at getting back on track in the next few weeks.
Another stress is my cat. She's 15 and really pretty darn healthy. Her normal activity level is high and she was eating heartily. A few weeks ago she was diagnosed with high thyroid levels and the vet said her activity level and appetite were not normal. So she is on meds that knock out her thyroid. She has been on them about 1 week and she is a slug. Today I noticed she hadn't touched her cat food in 24 hours. I offered her fresh - she took a few bites and walked away. I let her out to go get some exercise and then worried I wouldn't find her again before I left for the workout. Thankfully she showed up and I gave her some tuna which she ate right up. I called the vet and they say it's OK for her to eat tuna instead of cat food. It costs the same so that works for me. Apparently her behavior is now normal for an old cat. I try not to have favorites with my pets but this is my favorite pet and I hate seeing her like this.

New word of the day

OMG - I learned a new word at work - EMO.  My co-worker who has kids that recently graduated from high school had to fill me in.  What is our youth coming to?  If you don't know what an Emo is, ask your local teenager. 

Riley at the horse show

I cut my run short on sat. and took Riley to a little practice show...the jumps were tiny but he just needs to practice being good.  He can certainly jump big!  It was fun and a nice afternoon away from the usual.  By the way this horse is 18 and will be 19 in January...that is considered senior for a horse.  Riley doesn't think so.  He is one of 3 horses at the barn that doesn't eat Senior horse food!

You know you're tired when...

...you realize you got up earlier than you needed and once realizing that seriously consider going back to bed for a while.

I thought that not once but quite a few times!  I even considered going back to bed and blowing off the entire days activities.  As it is I'm only doing 10 miles because I'm going to a horse show.  I've done long miles and a horse show before but I've been tired since I missed my nap on Thurs.  and think it's in my best interest not to be completely drained before I jump my unpredictable horse.  There is another show in 2 weeks and I'm not going to go!

Crap - the dog's barking - got to go let her in!