64 and out (Part the Second)

Installment #2 (Contains Weeks 4 - 6)

Day 23 (11/29/2009): 6.8 miles, 58:06 (8:33 min/mile) Second Smallest River Loop
Lousy and tired continues. Vaguely feeling like how I did on my last day in Colorado. I think part of it is related to a build up of allergies (my family has a long haired cat), towards the end of the week, I just start to feel not so good as a whole. R arch seems mostly healed up now though.

Day 24 (11/30/2009): 6 miles, 46:46 (7:52 min/mile) Hillcrest/Orlando/Allen
Red eye back to Boston, followed by work, followed by a really nice night run. The red eye was actually surprisingly much more pleasant than from Denver, because you actually get 5 consolidated hours of sleep, even if its crappy airplane sleep. I didn't feel so deathly at work, and felt positively exuberant on my run. Started out easy but naturally picked it up, feeling great! Yay my first sub-8 min/mile run--aerobic fitness feels like its maybe actually within reach now. Also of note: fancied that I saw Chief and Anton running the opposite way on California, but it was dark and I have poor voice recognition.

Day 25 (12/01/2009): 5.3 miles, 47:01 (8:52 min/mile) Monterrey to Third Bridge
Yikes, I guess I'm feeling that red eye today. Feeling beat, so went super easy... thought I was hoping it would have been a little faster. Sore legs and felt a twinge in the L hipflexor again, gotta keep on top of those PT exercises...

Day 26 (12/02/2009): 5.3 miles, 45:33 (8:36 min/mile) Monterrey to Third Bridge
I guess I needed another day to recover. Still feeling lousy, though this time I was bothered to pick it up a little bit at the expense of breathing a little harder than I would have liked. L foot a bit tweaked out, but I've learned that this is fairly easily fixed by taping the metatarsals together for a few days. I would worry about this more, but it always seems to clear itself up pretty quickly.

Day 27 (12/03/2009): 7.1 miles, 59:02 (8:19 min/mile) Monterrey to Rose Bowl
Finally, a solid day. Cruising at a nice steady pace, feeling pretty good. I'm excited to finally get this run under an hour--I hadn't been seeing improvement over 7 miles really until now, so hopefully that indicates my endurance is improving. R foot was unhappy this time in the beginning, but I've identified the cause of why my feet have been complaining a lot this week: my shoes are getting past the 350 mile mark, and both have significant holes on the outer edges, from which rocks enter and my little toes sometimes protrude.

Day 28 (12/04/2009): 6 miles, 49:54 (8:23 min/mile) Hillcrest/Orlando/Allen
Super easy in the PM (allergy shots in the morning), proactively avoiding fatigue, since that seems to be an issue for me recently. This was one of those runs where I secretly hoped the pace would be faster than it was, despite the extremely mellow effort. Was disappointed on that account, but did confirm another Chief/Anton sighting. I think Anton secretly likes running more than he may care to admit.

Day 29 (12/05/2009): 5.3 miles, 44:28 (8:23 min/mile) Monterrey to Third Bridge
Some easy days does a body good. Felt alright, but apparently a little unbalanced today--almost ate it twice. Gah, ran out of time to buy new shoes!

Week 4 Musings: What does this all mean? This week has seen a few minor breakthroughs, good pace/effort ratios on Monday and Saturday, a solid 7 miler on Thursday... but also a fair share of painful slogs. Say 8:30 pace is where I started, I'm having more variance on that than in weeks past. Does that mean I'm becoming more fit, more fatigued... or both? This is going to be a long process, isn't it...

Day 30 (12/06/2009): 5.3 miles, 45:19 (8:33 min/mile) Monterrey to Third Bridge
New shoes arrive! They're hot pink! I don't think I'm really fast enough to pull off this look... but here goes. Got a late start, which meant that I ran into some horses in the Arroyo, which is always really annoying bc you have to slow down/stop and hope that you don't get kicked. Also sprained L ankle, gah. Not really feeling it today...

Day 31 (12/07/2009): 6 miles, 46:21 (7:47 min/mile) Hillcrest/Orlando/Allen
Mmmm, you can really feel the difference new shoes make on the pavement. I'm not liking this new trend of sleeping in on Mondays and running in the evening, but this was a pretty good run. A moderate effort yielded my second sub-8 min/mile run. Improvement is good!

Day 32 (12/08/2009): 6 miles, 48:23 (8:04 min/mile) 2 x Arroyo 3 mile Loop
Terrain a little rough due to the rains yesterday, and got up a little bit late, so there were a lot of dog walkers, but I felt inspired to push it a little bit. Wasn't expecting much due to the 12 hour recovery, but felt pretty good. Effort was definitely higher than yesterday, but it felt controlled, and the second lap came in under 24 minutes, so I was hitting a decent pace by the end.

Day 33 (12/09/2009): 7.8 miles, 1:08:21 (8:46 min/mile) California around RB trail perimeter
Gah, I knew a bad day was coming... having some GI tract issues. Ran in the early afternoon after going to the doctor. It was uncomfortably warm, and I was feeling uncomfortably weak. As I was slogging as quickly as I could to get home on the last little stretch in the Arroyo, a large dog jumped on me, causing me to fall pretty hard. I was already unamused at that point, so I unleashed a tirade on the owner, who didn't appear to speak much English and looked terrified. I felt bad afterwards, but not while my knee and hip hurt while trudging even more unhappily the rest of the way back.

Day 34 (12/10/2009): 5.3 miles, 44:57 (8:29 min/mile) Monterrey to Third Bridge
Still feeling a little bit low on energy, but no where near as horrible as yesterday. Picked it up a little bit on the second half, was a somewhat decent run. Nothing more to report.

Day 35 (12/11/2009): 6.7 miles, 54:16 (8:06 min/mile) Hillcrest/Orlando/Chester
I really didn't want to run today. Felt tired, physically and mentally, so I dragged myself out the door promising myself I'd just do the shortest circuit, but when I got to Allen where I usually turn around, I realized that I felt calm and re-energized. Continued on to the end of Orlando and came around on Chester. Felt really zen and blissed out the rest of the way back. I must have picked up the pace significantly when I started feeling better, because I was surprised to see the pace at the end.

Day 36 (12/12/2009): 6.2 miles, 51:05 (8:14 min/mile) Huntington/Oak Knoll
There was a break in the rain just long enough for me to squeeze this run in. Somehow I really didn't want to run nonetheless. I sat in my car in the parking lot for a while even after the rain started to let up. Went out too hard and felt lousy and tired the majority of the way. Coming uphill on Oak Knoll was especially crappy feeling. I also felt irate because I've done this run so many times, there's just too much data. I can't believe I used to finish this in 46-48 minutes.

Week 5 Musings: I kind of feel this emotional funk coming on.... like running every day is this unstable equilibrium, and I'm just not really in control of what's going on. Part of it too is the unclear trajectory. I guess this week contained 3 good runs, and a few horrible runs. Sort of like last week. If you stand on your head and look just right, maybe there's some improvement? But its still sort of nebulous. Still, I'm over 35 days in now, and it's much better that my head's a little broken than my body. There's still some aches and pains, but I feel like I've got it under control.

Day 37 (12/13/2009): 6 miles, 49:06 (8:15 min/mile) Hillcrest/Orlando/Allen
Ski date with Peter, Will and Ruby. The timing just didn't work out for me to run before, so I had to run after we got back. Ooof. Got home with no broken bones and my 1.5 ACLs still intact, but quads were a little thrashed. The motion of running felt a little bit unnatural, but honestly this run didn't feel as bad as I expected and the pace was decent all things considered.

Day 38 (12/14/2009): 6.2 miles, 49:55 (8:03 min/mile) Huntington/Oak Knoll
Gah, another morning slept through... but this turned out to be a surprisingly good run. Quads and calves still angry at me from the skiing, but I started out real easy and they loosened up nicely. Started feeling actually very good on the grassy part and picked it up on the hill at the end. Much, much better than two days ago!

Day 39 (12/15/2009): 5.3 miles, 47:24 (8:57 min/mile) Monterrey to Third Bridge
Maybe all exercise hits you two days afterwards, because today was downright miserable. I felt a little bit foggy from lack of sleep, and just generally weak in the legs. It was really all I could do to stumble through this run and narrowly avoid running my first 9 minute mile since this experiment started.

Day 40 (12/16/2009): 5.3 miles, 45:45 (8:38 min/mile) Monterrey to Third Bridge
Gahhhhh, still feeling weak and tired. To add to the disgruntlement, I got tripped by ANOTHER dog in the Arroyo. I guess this is what happens when I don't get up early enough. But seriously, curb your friggin dog people!!!

Day 41 (12/17/2009): 10.2 miles, 1:27:15 (8:33 min/mile) Random Pasadena
A truly inspired, calm, relaxing, awesome run at night that started out with a bad day and a desire to just run for a really long time. I didn't really have a plan for this run, but just went where-ever I felt like, and it was great. Started out pretty easy but felt better and picked it up towards the end. Relaxed and easy, despite the fact that this is my longest run in a pretty long time.

Day 42 (12/18/2009): 6 miles, 50:20 (8:28 min/mile) Hillcrest/Orlando/Allen
R glut a little bit tight and sore, so went easy, but wasn't intending to go quite so slow. Felt a little bit irate when I got home, but since I did an out of the ordinary run yesterday, I'll let this slide.

Day 43 (12/19/2009): 5.3 miles, 45:01 (8:30 min/mile) Monterrey to Third Bridge
R glut better but still a little sore, gave it another day to just take it easy. Focused on really keeping my shoulders relaxed and breathing calm and realized that this helps a LOT when one is tired. Kind of felt like I discovered something completely new... I guess I'm kind of a tense person to begin with.

Week 6 Musings: When I look back on this, there were some pretty (mentally) tough weeks in there, but I really think the turning point for me was that 10 mile run on Thursday. This is when the emotional funk started to dissipate, and the whole "running every day" thing really snapped together for me. I always thought that it would happen when my body was ready, that one day I'd comfortably start churning out 7:30 miles, and then it would all come together, but it was more of a mental shift more than anything else. That was the day that "running" truly felt like it integrated into my daily life, in a primal way like eating and sleeping.

Unfortunately, I would have to stop the experiment before I reached any sort of a physical breakthrough, but the next few weeks of running were some of the most interesting, satisfying and zen training that I've ever done in my life.