Tuesday 022211

With TZ busy this weekend, we did not make the show for one my favorite musical artists at one of my favorite venues ... but here is one of those shows.

Dogfish 90 is so good it borders on illegal in my book.

Leadville is apparently full.

I am tired of drugs in the sport, ridiculous clearings and testing stories, but this one about amateurs using PED's was interesting (but still sad). Apparently Chrissie W is now going to keep a blog of when she is tested.

The Incline is getting a little closer to legal.

I am purposely not posting links back to all the debates on a championship for ultras, or how the local guys train.

Today was a day where I looked at my calendar and internally groaned. It was a day full of meetings, and one where I knew a mid day run was unlikely. Nonetheless, I threw my gear in the car, hopeful that something would cancel or postpone so that I was ready if the opportunity presented itself.

The last meetings of the day got absorbed earlier into the afternoon and I thankfully got my window. I bolted home, getting there at 4, knowing I had to be done with a run by 5 to be ready for JZ's parent teacher conference (which are joyful events by the way). I asked if he wanted to go for a run, and he was in. We started with a jog, which included playful ups and downs in through the local canal ditch. He bounds in and out of this like a wild animal ... and I look like ... like a 41 year old man that does not do that much.

But then we got to the business at hand: sprints. We negotiate a head start for him, the distance and then off we go. It is all out for me to catch him and he is going not to be caught. I can't say he is going all out because he is laughing the whole time. He beat me on all the sprints except one today so I am going to have to give him less of a head start next time.

But this experience reminded me of some things I did as a kid. I recall when I was a summer camp counselor, I knew I was not doing any of the work that other guys were doing for HS training. They were all subscribed to the 750 club plan (750 miles from June 1 to August 31). With my job, I knew I could not swing that. And frankly, at that time, 8 miles a day seemed crazy huge. So, I would run as hard as I could when the opportunities would present itself during the day. Period 2 Archery would end I needed to get to the pond for Life Guard duty. I would sprint the half mile to the pond. After that, I would sprint the quarter mile to the dining hall for lunch. It hurt. But it would feel so strong.

Same thing today. With these sprints, I started off feeling like a bunch of gunk. But I could feel it peeling away, laughing with JZ and getting a itsy bitsy bit quicker. And in fact, for a half of a moment, I could almost taste a little bit of the fast on the last one. But he beat me anyway. A race to the fence. Laughing. Little punk that he is. Good stuff.

Once we finished that up, I headed out for another miles, and jazzed from my experience with my son, the weather, and the unforeseen opportunity to run, I just happily rolled. The miles clicked off collectively as fast as the repeats did yesterday (so I guess it was that windy yesterday) for five miles with a whole less PE.

Six miles on the day. My OC tendencies had me thinking I ought to do another set in the evening but I decided to skip that.

I have a 50 miler in 11 weeks. I guess if I am going to take that seriously, I ought to do something about that but I don't have a lot of itch for at the moment. Maybe I should register.