Lay Off

Haven't written in a bit, and telling you that I'll be taking some time off.

Foot's getting worse and the rest of life is closing in as well, so I'm going to take some time off. A week or two. Part of me hates to do it, but it feels right. Tired of half measures.

So check back once in awhile, and I'll see you then.

Weeds and Cinders

Second time on the track in two days. This time it was Bartram track and back to weeds and cinders. Plan was to do some easy interval work to check out the foot.

Sunny and in the forties this morning, running on borrowed daylight from last weekend's time change. Felt in a good frame of mind running down to 58th St. as this would be, effortwise, an easy workout. Reba gave me her iPod to replace mine, which finally died last week, and I had Fred Eaglesmith on the rotation.

Plan was to do 3x1600 with 400m recovery. The reps would be under 7 minutes. Actual times were 6:51; 6:56; and 6:54. More importantly, my foot seems to be holding up, although we'll see how it feels over the course of the day.

One thing I like about the Bartram track, more than any other I've run on, is that I rarely have a workout there without making some kind of human contact. Words of encouragement, a "how many miles you going?" shout, a nod of recognition upon sharing the track with someone for a second time. This morning a 50-something year old guy who was dutifully jogging around the track synchronized his workout so that he would do 100m bursts down the straightaway with me whenever I came around. On lap 3 of my third rep he hung with me for 200m and then when I finished the rep I stopped a bit and we chatted.

7.5 miles in 60:41.

Tale of 2 Tracks

In DC at a conference, staying with my sister. Beautiful morning, was unmotivated to run.

Had a blister on my heel from wearing shiny shoes yesterday. Tried to turn that into an excuse not to run, but I just couldn't make it fly.

So, decidedly uninspired, I headed out to the track down the street from Annette's house. Having gotten used to running on a cinder track with encroaching weeds made me appreciate the springy polyurethane all the more, and I marveled at the restrooms (i.e., not porta-potties) that were open just by the bleachers. A different world out here.

But that didn't make running around in ovals any more interesting. I did an easy five miles, speeding up a bit towards the end just to get it over with. I'm getting optimistic again that my foot is on the mend, and may head out to my (58th St) track tomorrow for some very mellow reps. We'll see.

And I have a physical therapy appointment next week Wednesday.

Coffee Break

Just like when you don't run for a few days, when you don't write for a few days then it gets harder to get back into things. There just seems to be too much to catch up on, and the inactivity has a momentum all its own.

Fortunately that has not been the case for my running. Today marks the fifth straight day that I have gotten a run in. A little victory, but one that I'll definitely hang on to. It started last Wednesday and Thursday (already blogged), then progressed with a 10.5 miler - out & back to Outley and five miles along Cobbs Creek with the guys on Friday. Saturday it was a rainy 5-miler on a SSB loop variation, and yesterday a 5.5 mile Art Museum loop.

Today I cycled out to Outley and ran 5 miles through Darby and Yeadon with Troy and Derrick. For most of the run we kept in proximity to each other, with the two of them doing their own pace and me staying with them. Our paces were not that different, and it would not have been much of an adjustment for us to run as a tighter group. That's what I'm used to, that doesn't seem to be how things go here. These become taciturn runs, and sticking to someone else's pace anchors me so that the pace remains suitable for my foot. Today's five passed in 40:40, a good pace for me.

Watched the NYC marathon before I went out yesterday. The coverage was awful, as usual, but at least it was on tv. The focus is very much on the men's and women's front packs, which is fine when they are relatively large but then when each of the races whittled down to two, and then one, the camera stayed focused exclusively on them, with little idea what the other 39,998 runners were doing. It's the Ricky Bobby approach to marathon coverage - if you ain't first, you're last. In doing so they missed at least one big story of how US runners not only won the men's race, but scored six out of the top 10 male finishers. So if this were a cross country meet USA would have won.

Speaking of XC, Tony's season is now done. He seemed to like it, and was solidly in the middle of the pack. The team had a good amount of success, unfortunately because of my teaching schedule I was only able to make it to one of his meets, the second to last one last week.

There, caught up again. Now time to get back to work.