You may recognize your face in this picture. It's a fun picture from Road Runner Sports and the recent world tour of running. This was a good time.
A few months ago my wife Mary asked me to sign her up for the Berlin Marathon. We can do it through work (why not, we sponsor the darn thing). I was out of town, Panama of course, when the entry went live on our intranet. So I emailed Sasha in the BU and asked him to sign my wife up. I gave him my employee number and all the right information. He emailed back confirming that he had done it. Well weeks later emails starting coming my way about the Berlin preperations. I would just forward them to Mary. One day though I noticed I received two of the same email. I opened one up and to my surprise my name was listed as an entrant. No, there must be an error. I walked down to talk to Sasha asked "Sasha, by chance did you sign me up too?" "But of course Dave, how could you ask your wife run and you not run."
Well gosh darn it, I didn't really want to run a marathon this year. In fact unless it's at the end of 112 miles of cycling I don't really want to run a marathon. But a marathon I am going to run. So the next thought was Train for it or run it. I in my sound mind and sound body (thanks Asics) I decided to just run it. Why train for something I wasn't planning on? But I'm no dope and for those of you I have occassionaly given running advice to I can't possibly in good faith jump into an event unprepared to at least run the distance. So with that I've chosen simply to run at every opportunity I have which at this point is every day. In a normal week or month I might run to or from work once. I've done it twice this week. Yesterday was with a guy in the BU that has run under 2:30 for a marathon many times. We talked the entire way. He kept looking at me with the "Are you o.k.?" look. I was laboring. Today, thanks to Trigger Point and sleep I ran again. My goal is essentially to run every day until I break down or the race comes along. Throw in a couple long runs and then bank experience. This is what I'll tell you, running a marathon hurts me worse than doing an Ironman. There is probably a preperation thing but a 3:20 marathon off the bike is so much easier than a 3:00 hour plain marathon. That 20 minutes is huge and I like the warm-up.
Back to the post title. Yesterday after my running buddy peeled off to his house, I slowed to a crawl. I told myself right then and there, "I hate running". But today I ran 45 minutes at my pace with big hills and sunshine and I had a great run. So what's to hate about that?
It's a good life.....
Dave
This is Mary on her way out the door for a 3 hour run. That's right, she's doing the program I gave her and crazy as it is it called for a 3 hour run on Sunday. It's her longest run of the training program and she did it with gusto and grace. Now it's a slow 3 week taper. I'm on week #3 of my focused training. I'm sick of it already. This is why I'm not a runner by nature. I would go absolutely crazy if all I did was run. My 3 week plan when something like this: Week #1 was 37 miles with a 4 mile tempo and a 120 minute long run. Week #2 was 44 miles with a 6 mile tempo and a 150 minute long run in shoes that absolutely killed my feet. This week will be 50 plus miles with an 8 mile tempo and a 120 minute run. I'll back it down next week and the following week with the Marathon the last weekend of the month. This is not the best way to do it but again, I couldn't seriously do an 18 week training program.
