Monday 060214

Last Tuesday as I ran up Green, and came up to the Saddle Greenman junction, I was surprised to see a grouse bird start moving in my direction.  I moved along the path past the turn, where Greenman slopes more gently and so my pace picked up, but I looked back to see the bird was doing its part to make sure I was moving along and jogging up the trail behind me.  Apparently this bird has become a bit of a hazard on the trail, and actually attacked Dr. Nick yesterday.   The general guess is it is guarding some sort of nest up there.  Given that I suspect the route will be closed pretty soon.  This are some pix from the FB thread off Nick’s feed.

BTW, Lucho has the best reply on that thread, presuming that Nick now has the super powers of a dusky grouse, which apparently does not include flight, but low ground chasing and pecking.  Watch out Boulder.

Meanwhile, I got this series of texts from my daughter.

The boy is apparently hitting his teenage stride in the appetite regard.  He came down to make his lunch.  He made a dozen more of these cracker, jelly, PB and cheese things and told me “DON’T TOUCH THEM.  I AM HUNGRY.”

 

Balance, or rather context matters.

I like Horwill’s rule as well.

10.2 miles.  A bit warm out there but not too bad.  Did a 3 mile and change warm up and then a few 200 yard (0.13 mile) strides.  Didn’t feel so great but got on it for 2 x 3/4 of a mile at pace(ish).  First was 3:48, second was 3:49 on full rest.  As I suspected a few weeks ago, I am going to struggle in the third and fourth minute.  I hit the half on each of these at 5 minute or even a little less pace and then faded to 5:05, 5:04 pace respectively.

I had hoped with the slight downhill nature to these I’d hit them in 5 flat pace, with the first feeling easy challenging and the second being just challenging.  With heavy legs today, they were pretty much challenging from about a minute in.  In other words, these are exactly the sort of repeats I need to do.  Less than 3 minutes is a bit too short – I can fake it.  Beyond, I am playing in a space where the cracks begin to show … and there is only one way to deal with that.  Patch em.

I can hope for a little track magic and slipping in a bit with a group, but I’d guess around a 5:05-5:10 equivalent (4:45-4:50?).  Breaking 5:08 equivalent for 1500(4:48?) would be nice as that would be a master PR.  I am a bit away from sub 5, but the progress since March in this regard has been fun.  While I am doing what in repeats that used to be en route splits, I am also moving at a pace that was not possible 12 weeks ago.  Ah, who knows?  It could be a 5:20 come Thursday.  Wrapped up with a few miles to warm down and then a couple more 200s to close out.

Anyway … today I wanted to go hard.  I thought it would be best to do the hard workout today so that I had ample time before Thursday night’s race. And I figured with the lesser miles yesterday, a couple of days of recovery I ought to feel fine today.  I’d push vertical efforts to later in the week. 

But nah, I felt like crap.  Part of this is a bit self mentally imposed.  Actually most of it is probably in the head.  I think too much about running (uh, this blog) versus actually just running at times.

Knowing that I am going to have to work a bit, and that it might not go well, I self reflect on how every little part feels and I how I want it to feel perfect.  This never is the case though.  I think I have felt perfect maybe a total of five times in my running life.  Every runner of consistency I have know is actually like this.   You hear it at the start of every run where we bitch about about how crappy we feel. 

Even though I know that feeling perfect is pretty rare, I still sort of seek it out for the every run, every day, particularly when there is a faster effort afoot. When it is not the case, and I can feel that ahead of time, I can then tend to stall in hopes that I will feel a little less crappy.  The stalling doesn’t change anything really, but I stall anyway.  Again, more head crap.  Even after running for 30 plus years, I can have a lot of self doubt about a single run.

post script.  I see that my PR for 1500 is 4:51.  2 weeks later I ran 5:12 for the mile.  2 years ago.  It might be close.  By the way, it is pretty cool how their results page goes back a decade.