Category Archives: 07mi

A slow and drizzly morning

07mi

Start time: 01/08/05, 9:00am

Location: W&OD Trail

Distance: 7 miles

Run:Walk ratio: 4:1

Average pace: 12:29min/mile

Went out running with “the group”, which means going a little slower. I don’t know why running with multiple people slows me down so much; I guess it’s the social interactions and all. Half of the people we were with hadn’t done much running lately, so we did a small distance. Pam, Randy, and I ran an extra mile afterwards but since Pam and Randy both had places to be even they had to stop relatively quickly, so I decided to get out of the moisture and go home and… take a bath. Hmmmm, something seems wrong with this story, I’ll figure it out sooner or later.

It was really nice to be back with the group, though, something I hadn’t done since before Christmas. (A good turnout too, with seven of us in all.) Everyone seems to be adjusting to the new pace pretty well, and I think before long we’ll have lopped off another half minute as a group. (I’ve been running faster 5-milers on my own, so I’m not too concerned about that.) Since I figure I’ll land in either the 12:00 or 11:30 pace group in May (you train a minute slower than you finish the “run an easy 3-miler, no huffing and puffing allowed” time trial), it’s nice to know that I’ll almost certainly have some of my buddies with me there as well. They’re good, good people.

Running: 7 miles

07mi, aidsmarathon

Start time: 7/12/03, 7:00am
Location: W&OD Trail
Activity: Running
Distance: 7 miles
Run:Walk ratio: 3:2

Another recovery run, another short week to report—aside from big thanks to Derek Barnes for helping support my fundraising this year!

After my uncomfortable 14-miler last week I took it pretty easy this week. I was watching my parents’s dog all of this week, so he was at least going for a very short walk every day, but otherwise I have to admit it was spent with me sitting on my butt a lot. The run site on Saturday was pretty deserted; I think some people are taking these short “recovery” runs for granted. We only had five people in our group, but Julie and I were the only ones in good shape. John was recovering from his fall two weeks ago, Lindsay just had some soreness issues that were being worked out, and visiting from another group was Lisa who is having what’s called IT Band Syndrome. I think our group should’ve been renamed “walking wounded” this week!

We ended up going a little slower in deference to the rest of the group, but John and Lindsay decided that discretion is the better part of valor (which it is) and after the first three miles decided they would just walk another two miles and call it a day. Julie and Lisa and I pushed on, and while a coach recommended that Lisa call it quits early, she pushed her way through with us.

Next Saturday I’ll be out of town (in the first three weeks of July I will actually have been at home for all of five days!); I’m tenatively going to try and make up the missed 16-miler that following Tuesday, but a lot will depend on how I’m feeling that morning. (If I do try and make it up, I’ll be doing half in the morning and half in the evening, which my coach last year swore works just fine.) If not, I’ll play it by ear. I’m good at that.

Running: 7 miles

07mi, aidsmarathon

Start time: 5/31/03, 7:00am

Location: W&OD Trail

Activity: Running

Distance: 7 miles

Run:Walk ratio: 3:1

Average pace: 14:00min/mile

Another week, another progress report… big thanks this week to my grandmother Ruth Spinelli, who became my latest donor while I was up visiting her in Pennsylvania over the weekend. Thanks so very much!

It’s amazing how a bad week can radically change someone’s attitude. If you’d asked me how I was feeling about this year’s training yesterday, the truth is that I wasn’t feeling terribly positive about it. After last Saturday’s run, sitting in a car for four hours was not one of the best things I could’ve done for my legs. By the time we arrived in Pennsylvania my calves were feeling stiff and sore, something they shouldn’t have been doing after just a six-miler. Even worse, I wasn’t able to shake the soreness; I went running on Monday evening after I got back home, and I had to quit halfway through because it felt like I hadn’t run in years.

All week long, I was trying to loosen up my legs and get back up to speed, with both crosstraining and just plain old walking. Add in strange shifting weather patterns and my joints were hurting on and off with no rhyme or reason. (Bizarrely, so were Julie’s, making us decide that it was the fault of the weather.) Even as late as Friday night, though, I wasn’t feeling good about it all. I was quietly thinking to myself that if this kept up, I’d have to seriously re-evaluate my decision to do the marathon this year.

So this morning when the alarm went off at 5am, I was not in the most pleasant of moods. I hauled myself to the run site, we split into two smaller groups, and headed out into the (thankfully not very hot) humidity… and a funny thing happened. Everything seemed to finally snap back into place. I didn’t have any problems at all with my legs or any body part. Maybe all I needed was a nice long run to finally get back to speed, but the seven-miler flew by really quickly, and our group (me, Julie, Asha, Lindsay, and Mary) did a great job of hitting all of our time goals.

Needless to say, I’ve made sure to keep everything moving today since then, and so far so good. Sometimes, it seems, all you have to do is not give up and it’ll all work out in the end.