Mental house cleaning (or barfing)

1.) I love racing but I don’t race much.  I love so much about racing.  The anticipation of it.  The hum energy of the participants.  The testing of yourself.  That feeling you have when you get to 2/3rds of the race where you wonder if you are going to be able to hold on.  The failure.  The success.

But I don’t race a lot.  And that is for a few reasons.  There are parts of me that find it to be incredibly self indulgent.  A race becomes a focal point around me, almost to a point that I wonder if that is right.  I mean, in a race I am doing something I can do for free and without it taking up as much time as it does.  That is – I can go and run hard whenever the heck I want without the cost ($) of the race, or all the time associated with it (getting there, etc).

I am not going to give up racing mind you – because I do love it.  But I do see this paradox in how I feel about it.

2.) There are way too many people driving cars and texting these days.  I can’t say this scientifically, but I think that has to be more dangerous than driving with a BAC of 0.05.

3.)  JW – great quote:  clear the negative thoughts and kill yourself out there... if you blow you blow... racing is for racing... not thinking!  I agree with this sentiment.  Once you go, you go.  That does not mean you don’t race smart, but you can’t undo what you have done in a race.

4.) I had a great conversation with Lucho on Saturday.  IM, logs, strength, VO2, ultras, the edge, fatherhood, tomahawks … I find my talks with him to be very motivating.  The guy oozes motivation.

5.) I found this race time predictor (one distance time predicting a different race distance time) and it seems that my 17:40ish 5ks actually align well with my performance yesterday.

6.)  In the past, my race results seemed very much aligned with certain workouts I did.  If I could do four by a mile at say 5:20 pace with one minute rest, then I was pretty likely to do 16:40 for a 5k.  It seems as of late, none of my workouts predict what I can do in a race.  In fact, I seem to struggle in workouts as of late, and out perform that in a race.  Good problem to have I guess.

7.)  I am pretty confident in saying I have a good base.  I enjoy immersing myself in some level of mileage, almost more for head time than the training benefit.  My mileage thus far on the year is the highest it has ever been for this day-date.  I see runs at low HRs where I am clipping low sevens.   But ask me to break six minutes, or heaven forbid 5:45 for a mile continuously and it is a struggle.  The pace difference between 6 and 5:30 is big.   I need to do work that makes 5:30 seem comfortable, sustainable.  The workouts to do this are pretty self evident, but my problem has been that I compromise those workouts by pounding out miles before them.  Seems easy to solve, but I have to change my habits so to speak.  In other words, if I want to get serious about breaking 17 minutes for a 5k (again), I need to revisit these habits to find the right mix of miles that don’t compromise the workouts.  Quality ought not to significantly impact quantity and quantity ought to not significantly impact quality.

8.) I raced in the compression socks yesterday for the first time ever.  I did not notice any difference in racing in them so I am not sure if I will do that again.  That said … maybe I don’t feel nearly as sore today because of that? 

9.)  Or maybe the way to immunize yourself from soreness in a half marathon on the roads is to do Pikes.

10.)  I am increasingly aware of certain muscular weakness that I am avoiding.  Particularly in my upper quads and hips.  I can feel this weakness in a variety of motions, but not really in regular running.  That said, I am sure my running would benefit from working these, this area.  I dread it because I know how weak I am there and how hard that work will be … but I need to establish the habits of the squats, the core work.  Again, this sort of ties back to the realization of how serious I am about this or how much I am not.  I often know what I need to do, but often don’t elect to do it because … I am too busy, or I have not made it a habit or … excuses.  Not sure if they will go away. 

11.)  When I run into folks and they say “I read your blog and I find it to be very inspirational!” I am both a bit proud and humbled.  I am proud of course because one of the ideas I have behind this blog is that we can all inspire each other.  I am inspired by other blogs and what they do and under the conditions they do it.  These are not elite athletes, but everyday folks, making choices to better something greater than they are and are willing to fail to do it.  So, if this blog helps someone in that regard, I am glad to hear that. 

But I am sort of blown away by it.  Suddenly you realize you have the microphone, and you are on the stage.  And really you did not do anything to deserve to be.

12.)  It is a bit warped I realize, but one of my favorite sport moments to be a spectator of is the last six miles of a marathon.  And not that crazy stuff that the elites do at Chicago.  I mean the every man types back there.  This is a true to life gut check where your gums sweat, and your spirit is put to the fire.  I have had the privilege of seeing it the last two years at Denver and I love it.  Folks leave Wash Park, all aglow and ready to hit their target, their PR, whatever.  2 miles later their faces are ashen, their shoulders crouched, they struggle to run paces that seem pedestrian to what they had did 15 minutes ago.  It is a test.  Having that front seat view has been incredibly inspiring to me.

13.)  Next up for me …think I am going to chase mile, 5k, 10k stuff for the rest of the year but will still look to do some other stuff … like some long run in the mountains Halloween weekend.  And my chasing does not mean a race every weekend (see above).

14.)   Off to Arlington VA next week.  Where to run?

15.)  I have been itching to get to the mountains, particularly to get a view of the foliage, but along the same lines as above regarding races … I am just getting in stuff out my front door these days.  It feels very self indulgent to tack on an hour for mountain trips these days.

16.)  Masters stuff.  It feels weird to me to say “second master.”  Okay, I get it and I appreciate it.  I know that as I get older my ability to throw down with a 22 year old goes out the window.  But … I am not a big fan of things like Pikes saying I was top master when I was actually third behind Carpenter and Boettcher (they were pulled out of Masters category as they were top ten).  Even worse is that crazy crap that they do with age graded performances.   Telling me a 90 year old outperformed a 40 year old on race day based on some math equation is interesting – but do not provide awards based on it.

17.)  I think I am turning the page on this Nutella stuff.  It seems pretty good.  But I have not read “Born to Run” yet and I am not itching to do so.

18.)  I remain a bit surprised actually at how much interruptions to training, or less than ideal conditions seem to have hardly any effect on performance.  I’d say my gaining a bunch of weight with recent business travel, and excursions to Vegas have not been ideal for my training, but clearly the general consistency I have has overridden those potential pitfalls.

19.)  This song was in the mix yesterday morning to get me in the groove.

20.)  Am I the only one that has fantasies about loosing your sh*t with TSA at the airport and screaming how flipping stupid this all is? 

21.)  Ritz would have had his hands full with Mario yesterday.

22.)  Data from RnR from yesterday: