Another Brick in the Wall

A couple weeks ago I read something that I’ve really been trying to keep in mind during my workouts. Basically it said “To be a good runner you can’t think in terms of days and weeks, it takes months and years to reach your full potential”. Of course it was written much better than that but you get the gist. I’ve been reminding myself of this every time my goals start to get a little out of control. For example, my goal for the Eugene half is a sub 1:35:00 but when I’m feeling fast and running strong in training I start to think that going sub 1:30:00 is totally reasonable. This of course is a total recipe for disaster. It reminds me of a dream I had recently where I had talked myself up as an awesome tennis player and next thing I knew I was facing off against Pete Sampras. I remember thinking “what in the hell did I get myself into”. Luckily I woke up a bit later and was relieved that it was just a dream; pushing too hard in the first miles of a race to hit an unreasonable goal can be a nightmare that unfortunately, you can’t wake up from. But I digress – back to training talk.

Last weekend Jen and I ran up at Lacamas Lake in Camas and had a great run. She had some goal pace miles lined up in the middle (14 miles total with 7 at race pace) and she totally nailed them. I was responsible for keeping tabs on our pace so we ended up with a difference of about 35 seconds between our fastest and slowest miles; yeah, I’m not the best at keeping a steady pace – that’s Jen’s expertise. The trail had some little rollers in it and in the last couple miles I could really feel it in my hip flexors when we would run up them.

Sunday we headed out to Multnomah Falls and hiked to the viewing platform at the top. The trail is a mile long and climbs 700 feet; a perfect trail to try to run up sometime in my opinion. Since it was the day after a long run, and I had jeans on, and I really don’t think I could do it right now, I decided that this was something to keep in mind for the future. Here I am on the bridge that crosses the lower falls:


Before I get into this week, here are my totals from last week:

Swim: 0 -- Bike: 75 min on trainer -- Run: 31.5 mi -- Push Ups: 366

And my Feb totals:

Swim: 10,100 yards -- Bike: 5:30:00 trainer -- Run: 107.5 mi -- Push Ups: 1,370

This week I started with six easy miles Monday evening after work followed by a repeat of day one, week four of the pushups challenge. I’ve really hit a tough spot with this week and I have a feeling I’ll be repeating it a couple more times before I move on.

Six miles – 49:04 - 8:11 AP

Tuesday morning I was up before work for an hour on the trainer – nothing exciting to report here. I watched the end of Alien vs. Predator II – Requiem. It was pretty good, but then again I’ve been hooked since Arnold, aka “Dutch”, battled the original Predator in the jungles of Guatemala. After work I headed out to the pool for masters.

Trainer – 60 minutes
Swim – 2,250 yards

Wednesday after work was another Tempo run of six miles. I felt good through the miles and never felt that I was working so hard that I would not be able to complete the distance.

Last week I ran five tempo miles at 6:28, 6:57, 6:48, 6:48, and 6:56.

This week’s miles came in at 6:42, 6:55, 6:44, 6:46, 6:35, 6:41 – miles one and eight were 8:30 and 7:44.

I was really wore out after the run so I only did two sets of 25 push ups before making a quick sandwich and heading over to the Rose Garden to meet some co-workers for the Blazers game.

Eight miles w/ six at Tempo: 56:36 - 7:04 AP

I hope everyone has a great Friday and a fun weekend – if you are racing, good luck!