Overdue fall 2016 update

It's been a while since I wrote down anything in here. August twenty-eighth, in fact, was my last entry, and that's because I don't like writing (or reading, or talking) about running when I'm pissed off at it. I had what was, for me, the worst season ever, which really isn't saying that much because I've been #blessed to have an almost injury- and sickness-free career up to this point. Unfortunately the weird sickness, or reaction, or full-body freak-out, or whatever it was, showed up a total of three times this summer and fall and basically trashed any chance of me putting together any good training and racing, so after the third time it happened I threw in the towel and took a total of 5 weeks either off or very easy. I think I actually took 2 weeks off and ran like 30-50-60 for the next 3 weeks.

Once those three weeks were up it was late November, and I figured I might as well see how I was doing. I bumped the mileage hard and for the next three weeks (up until now) I ran a lot and gradually increased the workouts systematically as follows:

Intervals once a week, starting with 8 x 200 and adding 100m to the length each week. So it went 8 x 200, 8 x 300, 8 x 400, etc. Recovery was adjusted to be reasonable.

Tempo once a week, starting at 4 loops around the park (4 miles) and adding 1 loop each week.

This worked fine at first until I went to Boulder to visit Feeney (who I'n sure I mention in the early entries of this log) and was on his schedule. We did a hard half marathon workout of 3 x 2 miles for him, because he is in good shape and racing Houston in a few weeks. Then we ran almost 2 hours the next  day and an "easy" 10 miles the day after. This trip was fun, but wrecked me because of the cumulative effect of fatigue brought on by altitude and hard training.

Once I got back to Baltimore, I got back into training and plan to continue on that above schedule for some time until racing starts. This was I think I can get into shape without forcing it too quickly.

The most important change I have made since getting back into it for real has been not timing anything. Since the intervals are on the track at PP high school and the tempos are around a 1 mile loop, I know all the distances and don't need to time anything to know how far I've gone. So far I've been working out 100% by feel and have been feeling pretty damn good. I know myself pretty well, and I know that if I start timing the workouts I'll start inching the pace down too hard to try and hit splits I think I "should be" hitting, or racing previous versions of myself from last year when I was in the best shape of my life. I know that that's dumb, but I also know that so much of my self-confidence and ego is based on running fitness that even despite my best intentions I'll still be stupid about it. So, I haven't been timing anything and as a result I really don't have a clue what kind of shape I'm in. But who cares? It's December, and the first really big race I care about isn't until April 2nd (Cherry Blossom). So I've got basically three months plus to get into great shape.

Great segue there into the racing schedule. I just applied for the Saucony Hurricane team, and one of the questions on the application was a tentative spring schedule so I was forced to look up races I want to do. Since those are fresh in my mind I figured I would add them here.

Big races: Cherry Blossom, Pittsburgh half marathon. These are two races about a month apart that I really want to knock out of the park.

Other races added in around: club challenge, Tim Kennard, Pikes Peek, Shamrock 5k? Delaware half?? I originally assumed that Pitt and DE were the same weekend but turns around it's a weekend apart. Even so doing two half marathons on back to back weekends is a very tall order, but I might still do it...for the scrilla.

I've never done Shamrock, but if I can get those goobers at CCR to comp my entry I would like to do it. It's the most competitive Baltimore City race so I think I would be remiss not to do it when I'm in good shape.

That's it for now, I hope to continue logging high mileage, moderate workouts and feel good doing it.