Jury's Out (Running)

Less than three weeks to go until Paris. I wanted to run this week hard, in part to make up for my difficulties getting regular workouts in these last few weeks and in part because I've always been ambivalent about three week tapers. I wrote last week of my intentions to do so and Mike M., who always has sound training advice and who I ran into at the Adrenaline 5k, almost begged me to ease off this week. Bill K. concurred and I cringed seeing Paul H. go sub-19 although he had bad plantar fascitis problems and is running Boston in a few weeks.

So perhaps it was my subconscious at work as the alarm mysteriously did not get set yesterday morning. During the course of seeing when I could squeeze in a workout I came to a compromise. Put in some hard workouts but ease back on mileage. More mileage at this point is not going to do me much good. The hay is in the barn, as I like to say. I don't know how much running a few hard days, revving the engine as Greg McMillan puts it, will help me out physically but I still need to sharpen my mental acuity until I'm satisfied that I'm ready for the Champs d'Elysees.

So I rested yesterday, which I imagine did me some good after a hard weekend, and I ran the 11 mile Strawberry Mansion Bridge loop hard this morning. Hard meaning constantly pushing the pace and running the middle 3.5 miles at just the slow edge of marathon pace in 21:18. Hard meaning the 11 went down in 74:45. And hard meaning it was another cold uncomfortable March morning, with the wind blowing up MLK and the traffic seeming to be timed to throw me off rhythm.

I've got jury duty today. I went in yesterday and they actually picked me to sit on a case. This is the first time that has ever happened. Usually they ask me what I do and I tell them I'm a sociologist and the prosecutor politely strikes me from the pool. But yesterday was different for some reason. Maybe I'm oozing less radicality these days, maybe its because my hair is short. Anyway, I'm assigned to a criminal case thats expected to last two days, so I've had to rearrange my other commitments over today and tomorrow. I imagine I'll write about it a bit after its over.