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September 29, 2004

Feeling better

So far this week is going much better than I had hoped. I ran 2.5 miles yesterday morning and another 7 miles at our cross country meet. I still have trouble remembering to breath when I start running, but at least the pain is manageable. This morning I ran another 2.5 miles, taking me up to 15.5 miles already this week, more than either of the last two weeks.

Yesterday we were in Odessa, Wa for our meet. Its in the middle of nowhere - almost west Texas. Ok, not that bad, but its 2 hours from Spokane and there's only one "store" in town. The closest stoplight is probably 90 minutes away. H. and I ran the course before the races to get a feel for it and measure the distance. As we were leaving the host coaches wispered to me that I should keep an eye out for snakes and to let him know if I saw any on the way. Fortunately I didn't and neither did any of my runners. It was 90 degrees again for the second race in a row so our times were pretty slow. We also worked on running negative splits (not entirely successfully) so we didn't run up to our full potential. But it was our 5th race in 15 days and we we lost nothing (crazy league) if we ended up losing. The girls ended up winning 35-36 anyway and the boys finished 11,12,13,17,23 and in 4th overall. The boys ran without their normal #3 also so their pack is developing really well and they should win next week.

Posted by at 9:19 AM | Comments (3)

September 27, 2004

Biking and running through pain

Today I finally decided that it was ready or not for my ribs. I hopped on my bike at 7:55 AM (brrr) and rode for nearly an hour. I had a lot of trouble with breathing on the uphills, but it felt not as bad by the end of the ride.
In the afternoon I also ran about 3.5 miles with the team. I felt terrible, but it shouldn't take too long to get back to feeling good. The legs are still there, but since I don't take full breaths I feel more tired than I should.
I'm hoping that my ribs will continue to get better even though I'm stressing them. I guess I'll have to evaluate at the end of the week. I'm not setting any goals for the week just yet, but it would be really nice if I can at least run every day and also get some biking in for cross training.

Posted by at 6:46 PM | Comments (2)

September 26, 2004

Weekly Update

At least this week wasn't so bad as fas as normality is considered. I didn't run but maybe 15 miles this week, but it wasn't because I didn't have time. Although I was fairly pressed on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. My (or worse) from last week's comment on my ribs turned out to be or worse considering I'm still in great pain a full 10 days after the injury. Its hard to run when it hurts to take deep breaths and hurts to move your arms more than about 30 degrees. Today I felt a little better though so I think I can start bike riding this coming week and at least get some conditioning in. Woe is me...at least this is giving my plantar fascia time to heal too and I haven't missed the new shoes I haven't had time to go and buy.

On my cross country team front we had a good start to the week and an upsetting weekend. We easily won our home invitational 39-60, but then got blasted this weekend 50-131. Hopefully we'll make up that gap by the time the state championships rolls around.

Posted by at 5:37 PM

September 19, 2004

A entry from the slacker

The week in Review!

First I want to apologize for being such a slacker in my blogging as well as my running this week. I know it will not motivate any of you to hear about it, but hopefully it will at least motivate me. This week was even more “hellish” than my past couple weeks. I can only look forward to the coming week and hope for some sanity to return to my life – yeah right.

I’ll start with my excuses because the running was so pitiful that I need lots of excuses. Last Saturday I learned that I wasn’t being hired to teach fulltime for the rest of the school year. That was fairly disappointing although not entirely unexpected. The school did offer me one of the classes for the rest of the year though, which I decided would be good if I could find some other productive endeavors to fill out the rest of my schedule. So, I spent all Sunday figuring out contingency plans and started putting them into action on Monday. My #1 plan, which seems to be working out, involved taking education class at Whitworth College towards a Master’s degree, while teaching the one class and coaching. I didn’t have much time to put things together though because I was still teaching full-time for the rest of the week and Whitworth started classes the week before. Eventually I did register for 4 classes, but with teaching full-time last week, my last full-time week, coaching everyday and attending those classes I was not a happy camper.

I ended up running like 15 miles this week and most of the miles came during our cross country races when I was running back and forth to cheer and get split times. On Thursday I didn’t run but decided to play basketball in the evening for some exercise. I remembered why I like running better on Friday when I was not only sore, but discovered that while getting the wind knocked out of me I had bruised a rib (or worse). Yesterday during our xc meet I was running back and forth all day and by last night it was hurting a ton. Today I didn’t run because it hurts so much! Hopefully tomorrow it will be less inflamed and I can get in a decent morning run. Despite only running 15 miles last week, I am still hoping to run about 50 miles this week. I’m not too sure how my body will like that, but if I start to break down I can take next week to recover a little bit.

Well since I am officially a college student again its time to stop procrastinating and do some homework so I’ll have time tomorrow to get set-up for our home cross country invitational.

PS-We did get ice cream bars after the Sundae Sunday 10-miler, but they don't give actual sundaes anymore :(

Posted by at 6:58 PM

September 12, 2004

Taper

Well my unintentional taper produced a pretty good result today. I was a little worried going in, but hey when you drop from 55 mile weeks to 35 mile weeks you are supposed to race fast. Of course I still have 6 more races this fall so I could be in trouble.

Today was the Sundae Sunday 10-Miler here in Spokane. I've run 57:07 and 57:08 the last two years and 54:?? four years ago. Today I didn't know what to expect but I went out fairly fast anyway (5:24 first mile). I was leading at that point and feeling really comfortable. At 1.5 miles a guy came by and said "ahh, you guys look to comfortable" and surged ahead. At two miles (10:57/5:33) I was about 10 seconds back and in 3rd place. The third mile has a significant downhill and I surged before the hill and ran hard down the hill. At three miles (16:05/5:08) I had moved back into second and I closed the gap on first by 3.5 miles. I wasn't feeling great at that point but I was hoping that we were far enough into the race that there wouldn't be any more big surges. I was wrong though and the eventual winner took off after 4 miles (21:28/5:23), building a 10 second lead at 5 miles (26:59/5:31) and 25 second lead at 6 miles (32:38/5:39). At that point I had to start focusing on the guy next to me. I only made two surges on him b/c I felt pretty comfortable letting him set the pace and I was quite worried about the about 300' elevation gain during the 9th mile. I also didn't hear anyone else near us so I could tell it would be between the two of us for 2nd ($50) and 3rd ($25) place overall. I wasn't feeling really great at mile 7 (38:19/5:41) but I could tell that he was in about the same condition. At 8 miles (44:01/5:42) I made considerable effort to be as patient as possible and let him lead the way up the hills, but I only made it to about 8.5 miles before I surged past. I was hoping to get a good gap by the top of the hill but I could still hear him at 9 miles (50:11/6:10). I kept the effort level up as we crested the hill and went into the last flat mile. I finally got the gap I had been working for with about 600 meters to go and maintained it through the finish (55:43/5:32).

I am pretty happy with the time and placing in the race, but I know I could have been up with the winner (~55:00) if I had had a better last 6 weeks of training. At least its an 84 second improvement from last year and something to build on this fall.

This Week's Mileage: 44 miles
Sun. 14 miles - Sundae Sunday 10-miler (2nd place)
Sat. 3 miles - Fish Hatchery
Fri. 0.5 miles - Stride Drills

Posted by at 11:36 AM | Comments (3)

September 9, 2004

Running and working too much

I really need to motivate. Its been harder than it should be to get out the door lately. Partially because I'm working like 12 hours per day but also because I spend two hours of that day coaching cross country and it seems like I should already be done running. The team is done so I feel like I should be done too. Tomorrow I'm going to start morning runs b/c that seems like the only solution.

I was mentally prepared to be working like 3-4 hours per day this fall. Then all of a sudden I'm teaching full time again and hardly have time to think b/c I didn't do any prep work over the summer. After I finish the syllabus for my conceptual physics class I'll be more or less on track and should be down to like 10 hours a day of work.

Running:
Thurs. 9/9 3 miles easy
Wed. 9/8 Meadow OnB and River Run - 5 miles
Tues. 9/7 FTB - 3 miles Hard
Mon. 9/6 - AM Labor Day Fun Run 5K - 16:21 (4th place)
PM1 - 4 miles easy, PM2 - 4 miles easy --- 15.5 mile day

Posted by at 5:45 PM | Comments (2)

September 5, 2004

The Spin Cycle

I think I'm finally into the spin cycle. Chaos continues in my schedule but the end is in sight!

Last week I unexpectedly picked up an extra 60 hours of work and I'll have another extra 50 hours this week. Thankfully being mostly unemployed I am sorta managing to keep my sanity and get all the work done. Running has taken a back seat this week and so has updating my blog. Hopefully both will pick up as the week continues.

Miles for this week :( - 33

Sun. 9/5 - 10 miles, Motorcycle Hill and Powerlines, 1:16:17
Sat. 9/4 - 5.5 miles at Mt. Spokane XC Ski Trails
Fri. 9/3 - 0 miles, team to 24hr Fitness Team Sports meeting
Thurs. 9/2 - 2 miles and no rest for the weary

Posted by at 6:46 PM

September 1, 2004

~~##&&##~~

Ever feel like you've somehow ended up inside a washing machine on spin cycle? That's me the past few days and presently...

Wed 9/1 - 2.5 miles easy, calistenics, basketball, chaos/stress
Tues 8/31 - 8.5 miles medium, powerlines run and some quarters w/team, chaos/stress
Mon 8/30 - 4.5 miles, switchbacks course
---47 miles for the week---
Sun 8/29 - 8 miles w/ PT, JC and BB in Selkirk mountains
Sat 8/28 - Marathon Relay - 6.2 miles at 6:00 pace

I'll eventually pull myself together but it may talk all the king's men!

Posted by at 5:33 PM | Comments (1)