Posts from — December 2008

I’ve been training well in the month since the JFK 50 miler.  I’ve been feeling well and looking forward to getting in a workout.  I’ve only taken one day off since I restarted training after the 50M and I felt awful for doing so.  I probably needed the rest, but mentally I prefer to train instead of resting.  I guess those are two good signs; I’m eager to train, but taking a rest when I should.

Over the past few weeks I did two races with my son.  One was a 3M cross country race through Prospect Park last weekend and another was a 3.4 mile loop around Prospect Park today.  My son was eager to do both races.  In fact he was over eager as he went out too hard in both and got a bad cramp.  He fought through the cramp though and finished each race.  He was very proud of himself for doing so and so was I.  My son even said that he would start coming out with me to train now and then.  Hopefully I could get him to come out regularly and get him in shape.

After today’s race, I called up my usual running partner and we set out for what we called the Parkway to Expressway run.  It consisted of running down through Prospect Park, out onto Ocean Parkway, down Bay Parkway to the bay and then along Shore Parkway to where it exits near the Gowanus Expressway.  We then ran down 2^nd Avenue to head back towards home.  It was along this section that Larry might have even saved me as I tripped over something embedded in the road and almost took a really nasty spill into oncoming traffic.  At the last second before I feel, Larry caught my arm and kept me from going down.  The roadbed consisted of cobblestones which had old railroad tracks embedded in it.  If I went down it would have been very ugly.

We made it home without incident after that.  We ran a total of 14.3 miles in an elapsed time of 2:20.  A little slow, but that counted all the time we were stopped for traffic lights, etc. 

I checked my training log after today’s run and I saw that I need 52 more miles to break 1000 for this year.  Fortunately, I still have time to make that milestone.  It will suck to miss breaking 1000 miles by so short of a distance.

With the conclusion of this weekend I am on a streak of 13 straight days of training.  All of them have been pretty good.  Not one session did I want to back off or did I have to struggle to complete the workout.  If anything I wanted more.  Mentally, I am ready for more; I just hope my shins are up to the task.

Today I worked out twice.  The first session was an easy 3.4 mile cross country race that I did with my son.  This was the second year in a row that my son came out to do this race with me.  He was a trooper today.   It was very cold and windy outside, but that didn’t deter him.  He also kept on going after he developed a bad cramp in his side.  It looks as though it hurt so bad at times that he wanted to cry.  I asked him if he wanted to stop, but he refused to quit the race.  He was insistent on not being the last person to finish.  He must have felt very good when he finished, because he kept talking about doing another race that is coming up next weekend.  I am hoping he will still want to do it when the day arrives.

Later today I went out with my friend Chris for a loop around Prospect Park.  It was much colder and windier by the time we met in the park and it was also dark.  Chris hasn’t been working out much, so we kept a very slow pace.  That was fine with me, since I was just happy for the company.  We bullshitted through the loop and talked about how we were getting fucked by the state of the current economy.  I counted my blessings though as he has it a lot worse than I do.

Chris was only out to do one loop of the park, so after we completed a loop we said goodbye and I continued on.  I picked up the pace a bit and completed a second loop, several minutes faster than the first.  We these two loops and the race from earlier in the day, my total mileage for the day was around 10.5 miles and 33 miles for the week.  Not a lot of miles, but I am just building back up to a decent base and still taking it somewhat easy after the JFK 50.

In other news, I’ve been officially accepted into the Vermont 100 Miler for 2009.  I am going to try to be a bit more careful this year so that my shins don’t break down on me.  I want to make sure I get to the starting line this year.  My other concern for 2009 is getting into the NYC Marathon.  I don’t have guaranteed entry and this bothers me.  I have a streak going and I would hate to see it end.  I’ll have to figure something out.