OLD!
Yesterday when I was at tech to start my run, there were just old people everywhere and not a parking space to be found! Perplexed, I finally located the source of the commotion: "CA Senior Track and Field Championships" were apparently being contested at the Caltech track. Interesting. Most of the old folks looked jolly and happy to be there, but there were a few... the very, very serious, ones... determined and frowning....
I guess this is what happens after Masters racing. I couldn't help but wonder... do I really want this? Is this what's going to happen to me if I don't get my shit together and deal with some running demons now. I kinda, actually I really want to be retired from competitive racing by the time I'm 75. Racing to me is an incredible emotional commitment more than anything else. You do to some degree push away other emotional commitments in order to be the best you can be. I don't know if that's what I want for the rest of my life. When I'm all old and wrinkly, I want to just run whenever I want and do other things whenever I want--play with grand kids, water the plants, cook for the family, go on a trip ... not trundling day in and day out on my walker so that I can beat so and so for the 90-95 age bracket world record in the 400m hobble.
Sunday 06/08: 1:08:21, Monterrey to RB. Thus the down week begins. A slow run, but an enjoyable shortened long day. Basically, I woke up today at 12:59 pm (after getting home from a wedding at 2 am, after a whole week of sleep deprivation) just in time to mash enough buttons on the TV for it to display the Prefontaine Classic. Of course they didn't bother to tell us anything about what happened with the Bekele/Defar world record attempts, but anyways... somehow I was still so tired that I was falling asleep during the commercials. I dunno, I guess this is what happens when you get old. This wasn't even like Caltech sleep deprivation, just a steady stream of late nights and 5-6 hours of sleep, but my body was totally trashed by today. I woke up and my legs were completely sore and stiff, despite very slow running or no running for the past 3 days. Shoulders were tight, general headachey, body-achey awfulness.
For this reason, my goal for this down week's long run was just to run as slow as I needed to feel good and loosen up all of the things that were complaining, which I did, and felt a lot better and stronger by the end. A cute little girl in a pink dress took a shine to me as well, and ran up the little hill at the far end of the Arroyo Tempo Loop with me. She said her name was Gabriella, and her parents were excited that she was already running. I hope she grows up to be a runner some day.
Monday 06/09: Off, shots. Argh, massive gastrointestinal issues, food poisoning (?) couldn't sleep, felt barfy all day. Didn't really eat much of anything. Horrible.
Tuesday 06/10: 46:24, Monterrey to bridge. Still felt a little bit barfy, but mostly just weak. Maybe bc of the not eating. Crawled through this short run, no hope of doing the scheduled Tuesday tempo workout.
Wednesday 06/11: 48:09, warm up, 2 mile steady state, cool down. In retrospect I wish that I had pushed this off until tomorrow... but what it really comes down to is that I wish that I had a better understanding of my body and more control over my emotional state to be able to make good decisions for where I currently am. In this case, the benefit of being more recovered from food poisoning should have been more than the benefit of having the extra day between tempo day and the longer harder runs that I tend to want to do on the weekends... but I chose wrong, because I like to believe I can do more on any given day than I really can, and it greatly irked me to have to potentially push back some of the other workouts I'd planned.
In observance of the down week, but more bc I still felt crappy, shrank down the planned 3 miles to 2 miles: 7:10,7:15, except worse feeling than the 3 mile steady state that I did a while back. So much for improvement. I am also disgruntled about the fact that my threshold pace appears to be still 30 seconds/mile slower than what I would like it to be. That just feels like a really big gap to fill... meh.
Thursday 06/12: 44:30, Monterrey to bridge again. Crappy but some improvement. Basically, how hard it is to get out of bed is probably the best indicator of when runs won't go well. It was still really hard today, but at least it didn't feel quite as much like I was going to die as some other days. I guess this is another data point to support that "what's wrong" with me is systemic, instead of weak legs, diminished lung capacity, etc. I actually do feel like those things have made a lot of progress, progress that isn't always reflected in my workouts, which is frustrating.
Friday 06/13: Off, shots. Friday the 13th! Nothing too scary, save for the amount of food that I consumed today. Felt sick. Argh.
Saturday 06/14: 43:06, Huntington/Virginia at about noon, 85 and sunny. Not my favorite conditions, but took it real easy and the heat didn't bother me at all, surprisingly. A good chunk of technical stuff that I've been neglecting lately afterwards, plus 2 x 200m accelerations, focusing on turnover. Learned something that might have been of use to me 5 years ago in my brief sprinting career: apparently one's go-fast muscles are in your butt. That's what started cramping when I tried to kick up the turnover. It's a little bit scary to think that I don't really recall using these muscles ever before.
Training this week: 4:10:30
Goals: To sleep and recover to be able to go into this next weekend strong.
1 comment:
I can't believe you didn't enter the track meet!
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