Feeling Better

I must say that I feel better about my chances next week. Sunday's run, a 10 miler, felt good. My legs had some spring in them and the effort felt comfortable, considering that had worked all night on about 7 hrs of sleep. This run was basically caveman. I did have my watch and there are mile markers on part of the curse I ran so I did check up on my pace a few times. But for the most part it was just by feel. I was about 4 seconds/mi faster than my goal pace and I felt like could hold it for a long time. So I will continue the same rest,hydration,diet as I head into the race weekend. The pisser is that I'm working an extra day this week for a total of 8 nights= 80hrs in a row. Which does take it's toll on my old ass. But nobody said it would be easy, or at least not to me.
In my quest for for complete and total understanding of everything :) I have ordered a couple books that I'm looking forward to reading. The first came to me from Gordo and will hopefully help me make some sense of the economy going forward. The other book has more to do with this blog and may be more interesting to my faithful readers ALL of you. :) Lucho has been reading this book by Mat Fitzgerald about the mental aspect of running. So being the thinker that I think I am I think it may give me some things to think about. I will let you know waht I think when I think it.

The Final Stretch

With only 11 days and just a few more training runs before Portland there is not much left but to get'r done. I would be less than honest if said I was ready. I'm really not sure. After yesterday's run I came home and looked back at my training plan and compared it to what I actually did. NOT SO GOOD....I got a 70%. Now this grade is miles ran divided by miles should have ran. I also did not quite make the mark on hitting all of my paces. And in the last few weeks my motivation has been for shit. But as I head into this last week and try to absorb the training that I did do. I'm beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I just hope it's not a train. Bottom line I going to run Portland and I'm going to do my best, even though I didn't do my best in training. At the end of the race I will either qualify or I won't. Neither my life nor my livelihood are dependant on this race. I will have as much fun as you can have while running 26.2 miles as fast as you can.
On another note you will notice a something new on my page it is the Endurance Corner badge. This is an online community set up by Gordo that has some great discussions as part of the forum. This is unlike some of the forums out there in which there is a lot of information spewed by so called "experts". These are some of the top athletes and coaches in triathlon. If you're interested in taking a look let me know as Endurance Corner is by invite only at this point.

LAST LONG RUN

I have to apologize for my last post as I know it was a bit of a ramble. I was totally procrastinating my long run on Thurs. Normally I do my long runs on Sun with the Hobbit but I have a real hard time with runs longer than about 10 miles after I have worked all night. So to solve this problem I decided that I would do my long run on Thurs. which is the day I start back to work. Confused, me too. Anyway I was not looking forward to this weeks run, a 20 miler. So rather than getting out the door when it was nice an cool. I came up with a whole host of things to do first and blogging was one of them. Again ,sorry. As I predicted 20 miles is along way and in no way fun. I did, however work on my nutrition and hydration with some success. The course I ran was brutal lots of hills something like 4700 feet of elevation gain. All this up and down took it's toll not only on my body but also on my pace. The goal was to average 20-50 sec slower than goal pace which would make it 8:20-8:50 pace.How about 9:30 pace.....3 pee breaks and 1 stretch. Boob and the Hobbit assure me that I'll be fine at Portland. I, on the other hand, am less than confident. We shall see.

Sunday Sundae

This race course as I mentioned in the previous post is tough. My goal for this race as with all races is to do better than last year. Well this was the 1st race that I did not improve my time on in the last couple of years. I was actually about 30 seconds slower this year. The week leading up to the race I had to many excuses not to train. Notice I did not say reasons, but excuses. Normally I hate excuses they go against everything I believe in. But the fact of the matter is my motivation is waining and getting out the door just did not happen. So one would think that I was well rested for the race, and I was. But I still just felt kind of bla. A 10 mile race on some tough hills just did not sound like much fun and it really wasn't. Anyway I started out running with a girl that lives down the lake from me who I ran the course with a few weeks ago. She and I had the same pace goal, 7 min/mi. The 1st 2 miles is nice and flat then comes the steep downhill that is about 1/4 mile long. My goal was to have us right on pace when we got to the bottom of that hill. I nailed it almost perfectly. The next 5 miles are mostly flat with couple little hills. But at about 7 3/4 miles you start a climb that last until just over the 9 mile mark. The last 3/4 is pretty steep. Then it is flat to the finish. So back at about the 4mile mark of the race Kerrie, the girl I was running with, pulled away from me. She did not speed up I had slowed down. I felt like I was in survival mode already. I was really trying to stay focused because if I didn't I would began to slow down. Anyway I putted along trying to muster the motivation to pick up the pace but legs were having no part of it. When I got to the 8 mile mark I was right at 58 min. So I new with the big hill still to come I was going to have a tough time beating last years time. And as I started up the hill my legs felt like they had no spring at all. At the top of the hill some guy passed me that looked like he was race walking, that was it. I had to pick it up. I started calling myself all kinds of names, making promises to myself I knew I wouldn't keep. I pulled out all the psychobabble bullshit I could think of to try to get my ass moving a little faster. Then I looked at my gadget and saw I had 3/4 of a mile to go. "Dude it's 3 laps, you've been doing those at 6:30 pace". Finally I started to speed up. When I rounded the last corner for the finish I could hear footsteps and that was the push I needed. I was able to put the hammer down for the last 800 I passed about 5 people. And when I ran through the shoot a voice behind me said "man I tried to get you but I couldn't". I turned around and shook his hand, he was about 25 yo, and I said " I heard you coming thanks for the push".
We hung around for the awards because they usually give away some good stuff. And to my surprise they called my name as 3rd place in my division.Wow! I even got a little coffee cup for my trouble. My friend BOB got 2nd in his division. And the girl I started the race with got 1st in her division and by the way ran 1:10 flat with no gadget, now that is knowing your pace. The Hobbit set a PR by 5 sec. but the 45-50 yo group is pretty tough.
The next day they had the official times posted and much to my dismay I actually did not get 3rd. They must have missed someone or had someone in the wrong division but I actually got 4th. So I will give up my coffee cup.Damn! My time was 1:14:28
The next race is the big one Portland Marathon on October 5th, my 45th birthday. I need to run 3:30 to qualify for Boston. Wish me luck I think I'll need it.

Training,races,work and poiltics

Yes I'm going to touch on all of those topics, but just touch. Training has been sparce since Sunday's run....0 runs. Which leads me to the 3rd subject in the title work....If you know any Pharmacists, will you send them to Deaconess Medical Center please. I would really like to get someone to take my job so that I could start my new job. As it stands right now I'm doing both jobs but only getting paid for 1. But to be fair I'm really only doing the new job about 1/2 assed, so maybe I should get 1.5x pay. As for the 2nd item in the title I will be running the Sunday Sundae this Sunday, DAH. This is a tough 10 mile race that has 2 killer hills. The first one is a down hill that is a quad killer. It come about 2 miles into the race. The 2nd is an uphill gaurenteed to peg your HR. It begins at the 8 mile mark as a rather gradual climb then the last .5 miles is not quite "oh my God" steep but will definitly get your attention.
And as for politics I'm going to vote and so should you.