Wednesday 110310

1.)  Slept in.  Felt good but damn I had some crazy ass dreams.  One that keeps popping in there is that I am swimming with my eyes closed and that I then open my eyes.  And while I open my eyes I realize my contacts are coming out.

Ummm … but I don’t wear contacts.  What the heck?

And there is a ridiculous amount of stuff in these dreams as of late considering how inspection of work products is an inspection of the work process that created them but let’s not even get into that.

2.)  Gary Robbins:  seriously messed up his foot on a run with Roes and King.  Reading this it made me realize (again) how quickly running can be snatched from us.  I recalled how lucky I was with my wipe out just a week and a half out from Pikes.

3.)  In the comments from yesterday’s stuff, Brett was picking at the form stuff from the New Yorker article on Salazar/Ritz.  It got me thinking about how JZ’s soccer coach recently commented on his running form.  I was standing on the side line watching the game.  He looked at me and said “he’s a galloper.”  He also mentioned how other kids are “gallopers.”   I could see what he meant.  Even at ages younger than this, you can see a kid’s running form develop.

My running form is, well, not pretty.  When I see it on video, I am left wondering how the hell I run as much as I do when I look like that.  It is almost like hearing your voice on the answering machine and realizing you sound like Mike Tyson.   I over-stride.  I look “blocky.”  In other words, I gallop.  Do my kids also gallop because of some genetic imprint I have passed on to them?  Or have they learned this by watching me run?  I subjectively feel that it has to be the former to some extent because I don’t think that if they had just watched videos of Geb and Bekele that they would be forefoot strikers who rip off 52 second last laps at the end of a 10k.

Bigger question though is if I do anything about their form.  Post script – why would I do something that stupid?

4.)  Talked to an elementary school chum yesterday about running.  I have not seen this guy in, mmm, maybe 25 or more years?  But we chatted running.  He just did his first marathon (Hartford) and is interested in doing some more.  Excellent.  Very exciting to interact with folks on the front end of that engagement with running.  One question he had that left me a bit off though was, “How can I feel better in the last three miles of a marathon?”  We talked a bit about nutrition and bonking, training and preparing for that … but I had to also let him know that the last three miles of a marathon are probably going to always hurt if you are racing it.  Heck, the last 200 meters of a half mile are going to really hurt if you are racing it.

5.)  In doing a little planning for next year, I got wind that we might need to go to some cousin’s wedding in late August.  Yup, I put that one out there and said, “well, I am not going to make that.”  Of course, anything can happen (see the Robbins reference above), but I gots to draw a line somewhere.

6.)  I probably was a bit stupid yesterday in doing 13 miles.  Okay, it was easy and I felt fine, but it is not the sort of thing that I ought to do the day before I want to do a faster workout.  I would have been better off doing like 3 miles, doing today’s workout with lesser fatigue (umm, excuses) coming in and getting more miles in today.

7.)  Okay, I may have been a little tipsy on Saturday night but at the Halloween party I was serious when I was having conversations with those guys about starting a rock band.  I found a bassist, a drummer and even a trumpet player.  Hmmm.  I imagine nothing will come of this but I’d love to make some noise.  I go back and forth as to if this mythical band is a hard rock band with horns or just a straight up spit and shrapnel rock band with influences from Zep, Foo Fighters, etc.

8.)  PM – 10 miles total.  2 mile warm up, then 4 x 800 (2:44-2:44), 4 x 400 (79-80), 4 x 200 (35-36).  Felt like cccccrap.  90 seconds between everything, inactive rest.

9.)  So the other day I was musing about Eddy’s come clean article in Runner’s World.  I was debating of how I looked at Hellybuck.  Was he a guy who made mistakes but was not contrite, learned from them and hence deserved forgiveness?  Or because he cheated others of their day could ever be forgiven?  I found it a bit of a conundrum for me because I have had some transgressions in my life that I like to think I could be forgiven for.

Guess who Hellybuck denied the top American spot at Boston in 2003?  Umm … fellow team member, fellow co-worker and bud Ken Pliska. 

I think it comes to this for me.  You got choices in this life.  Whatever you choose, there are consequences.  Some open doors, some close them.  Some really cannot be forgiven or forgotten … I think.  And so, while we say life is short … some of those choices can serve very long consequences.