Easy Boston Long Run...Not Quite

Boston Marathon was this past Monday and i arrived home Tuesday after a week away from home and good buddy Liam. Training up to the marathon had been pretty solid although in the last two weeks I had grown a bit stale since I hadnt had a downweek since september and still havent missed a day since 1/11/2010. While running has been going well Boston was never the goal but only an excuse to get in long runs and something I had committed to as a long run so at the very least i knew i would have to be in somewhat decent shape to make it thru. The plan was to just run this as a typical long run and possibly negative split the last half. The days/week after the race would be the down week and recovery I think my body needs since I've been feeling run down.

Wednesday was a travel day but I still managed to get in 10miles at a steady clip around a pond and some nice running paths that Mcgrane showed Vonny, Evans and I which was a welcome change from the Charles River path. Thursday and Friday were double days that had me at 11miles and 10miles while both Saturday and Sunday were an easy 40min jaunt. During this time I was unable to turn down drinks with my fellow reps and friends which led to very little sleep for the three days leading to Monday.

Monday morning I woke up and felt actually pretty good for sleeping about 90min total due to Todd Williams and Mark Coogan rehashing their glory days and reverting to 25yr old kids...which was pretty entertaining. Starbucks yogurt, some gross blue gatordade and a couple granola bars for breakfast and I was still feeling good but just ready to start the long run and get rolling.

Got to the start with Johnny Sipple and got my MiCoach all ready to roll and boom....we were off. Long story short I started off at an easy pace I've been running for months but as per the usual in Boston the downhills started to be noticeable pretty early. It would have hurt to run slower so i just kept running the same easy pace but was worried I was going to trash my quads and miss more than a week of my downtime. I stopped at 11m to take a leak and again at 19m when i ran into Emily Carano and chatted with her for about a minute then I was on my way again. By this point I felt that I had enough of a workout and just wanted to be done but still had another 45min to finish. At this point my quads were getting pretty rocked so I went into damage control and just shuffled in. For a run that was supposed to be easy as hell this did not feel good!

1)7:10 2)6:58 3(6:58) 4)6:53 5)7:08 6)7:00 7)7:02 8)7:04 9)6:58 10)7:04 11)7:05 12)7:00 13)7:03 14)7:05 15)7:10 16)6:58 17)7:09 18)7:13 19)7:03 20)7:28 21)7:39 22)7:20 23)7:27 24)7:22 25)7:36 26)7:31 .2)1:36

Tuesday and Wednesday were both 10min jogs that were not very good as my quads were drilled. Everything else is fine though. Thursday I went 2.5miles and was into an actual running motion but still have some lingering soreness. I would say I'll be close to 100% by end of the week. I'm just still amazed I had no pain, soreness and almost did a double the day I did my 21miler at Argonne.

So it goes...more updates to follow.

Dog Parkin

The last few days I have been getting up super early to run but then take Liam to Horner Park so he can party, hump dogs and run around crazy for an hour or so in the hopes that will make him content and more chilled out during the day. Not so much. I think he's building up his stamina now and getting a tolerance.

For some reason the Youtube link i placed yesterday was taken down so I'll try and fine another one. One record I have been totally mystified by has been the Smith Westerns. They are from Chicago, i've seen them be blown off the stage, they get endless amounts of hype and to be honest, their record sounds like dogshit. I have also been listening to the Dandy Warhols older stuff of late and for some reason i thought of their song "not if you were the last junkie on earth" when reading that Sookie aka Anna Paquin is bisexual. Vampire Bill better be watching his back now he's got double the worry.