The Five Minute Blog

The clock is started. Its 8:38PM and I will finish this by 8:43 PM. The World Series is on, game 1 from Tampa Bay, and I want to see a little of it before I fall asleep. GO Phillies!

Since Chicago, I've felt very good...no aches or pains at all, which is remarkable considering how bad I felt after Cleveland and Boston earlier this year. I basically got right back into my normal training routine, with the exception of skipping the mile intervals at the track last Tuesday, just 2 days after the race. I thought it wouldn't be wise to do speed work without a little recovery time. Well, this week, I went to the track on Tuesday with the intention of doing my usual 3 x 1 mile intervals, but I screwed up. It was a very cold evening, and very windy, and even though I ran two warm-up miles and did some 100 yard stride-outs, I still didn't feel loose. So, what do you do when you're not feeling loose, on a cold and windy night? You go out and run the first mile at 5:40. You do that if you're stupid. I am stupid. So when the time came to do my second mile, I managed one and a half laps before my right hamstring told me it would be better to just slow down. I pulled off into the infield and did as I was told. I ran another two slow miles than left.

So...if you know me reasonably well, you might guess that I was bothered by not putting in my full speed work. The next night, I got home at 6:00 PM, ran upstairs (hi Sue), changed and went out to make up for the lost speed work. My hamstring turned out to be just a little twinge, it felt fine all next day, so I knew I could try again. This time, instead of mile intervals, I did a 7.1 mile tempo run. Here is how the pace for the 7 full miles broke down. This was a hilly course with miles 1 and 2 being downhill, and 3 through 5.5 being uphill.

07:08
06:43
07:01
07:07
07:10
06:49
06:27


More later. I know Graham, I promised to talk about those fantastic, magical Nike LunaRacer too. I will, but I am at five minutes right now