December update…

It’s hard to believe it has been close to two months since my last post! Not much has happened since then as far as races go. I did the Bulldog 5k October 23rd. Wasn’t a spectacular run for me. Finished 5th overall and 1st in my age group with a time of 19:01. The Bulldog 5k route is fairly hilly so it isn’t a good route for fast times.I should mention that prior to the Bulldog 5k, I took a trip out to New York and met up with Brandon Scurlock. I traveled to New York via Amtrak, traveling through Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and arriving in Utica, New York. From there we traveled through Vermont to New Hampshire. After eating the mandatory lobster in Maine, we spent the night in New Hampshire. The following morning we got up and ran around 7 miles, got back to the motel and headed down the coast. We traveled down through Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and arrived in Pennsylvania stopping at my sisters to visit and eat dinner. We then traveled to Philly where Brandon had a friend at whose house we were able to crash at. After a day of touring Philly, we traveled by bus to New York City and spent a day walking around Manhattan. The following day we travelled back to Missouri via Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois.

Two weeks later found me flying out to California where I was due to be a groomsman in my friend Todd Peterson’s wedding. After having barely recovered from my previous “vacation”, I decided to play this trip a little more low key and not go rushing around California trying to visit friends. This trip was a little more relaxing and I had a blast hanging out with my friends Todd and James. Despite drinking a little too much and gaining some weight, it wasn’t all bad training wise as I was able to get in a few decent runs including a 9 or 10 miler along the beach.

Somewhere in the midst of traveling from coast to coast, I decided to start training for an early spring marathon. I picked the New Orleans Mardis Gras Marathon on February 27th to train for. At this point I am 5 weeks into the 18 week program. The Mardis Gras marathon is supposed to be a flat and fast course, so I’m looking to dramatically improve my PR of 3:06:39. While I’ve been told with proper training I should be able to run a 2:30:00 marathon (based on Vo2), I’m realistically looking for a time of around 2:45:00.

Final item of note, the 2004 Reindeer Romp was yesterday. After having run the 1.5 mile race last year, I decided to do the same this year to check for improvement or lack thereof. Last year I won with a time of 8:42. I figured I ought to be able to get that closer to 8′ even. As it turns out, my time was 10″ slower than last year. At first I was a little worried about this result, but I’ve since realized the following:
1. I’ve spent the last 7 months running with Achilles Tendonitis and while it is mostly better, I’ve only recentley started speed workouts again.
2. I was farther along in a marathon training program at this point last year.
3. I’ve been training heavily 7 days a week for the last several weeks. Even my “rest days” on Fridays include hard swimming with Masters swimming. So while my legs felt fresh, my heart was probably a little tired.

Despite the slower time of 8:52, I’m confident my current training is going to leave me well prepared for next year. I’m considering some slight re-alignment of my training schedule to give myself several true “rest days” a week, days on which my heart rate never gets higher than @155.