Live and learn

After a week off the blogging train in order to pay a little attention to life/work/drinking (my liver was feeling a little too healthy), I'm back with running updates that are: a.) fun, b.) interesting, c.) intellectually stimulating, d.) psychotic or e.) all of the above. I'll leave it to y'all to decide.

1. After over a month of responsible running, knee straps, ice packs, and an obscene amount of ibuprofen, my knees no longer drive me to long for amputation on every run. Victory! Knock on wood they stay this way. I'm restraining the urge to ramp back up to running 6 days, however. Until I'm forced to log killer mileage during Comrades training, I will be sticking to running a mere four times a week with crosstraining/yoga on the other 3 days.
   
   
2. As you can see (or probably not given the suboptimal quality of a BlackBerry camera), I busted out the old graph paper and charted my training plan for the next 9 weeks. Don't get me wrong, I love the Runner's World Smart Coach training plans, but since my schedule is so wonky and I have some traveling coming up in the next couple of months (Italy!!), it's often difficult to put together a plan that I can consistently execute. My new schedule sticks to the aforementioned 4 runs a week, focusing on quality miles over quantity. Each week includes a tempo run, speedwork, long run, and one recovery run. Mileage increases every week by 10% then drops back in the third week to allow for additional recovery or to accommodate a race. The goal for the next 3 months is to maintain a base mileage of around 30 miles/week, AVOID injury, and incorporate some good fast running to keep my times down and sanity in check.
   
   
3. Marathon training starts in earnest on July 12th!
   
   
4. "Running in Marathons: Facebook Made me Do It" - what is Facebook, the new excuse for every good/poor life decision? Possibly. Stumbled upon this article last week during my daily morning blog/newspaper run through. Although a bit simplistic in its analysis, the article raised some interesting points on the intersection of the Internet, social networking, and running. Little old blogging me is clearly in no position to judge. At least I haven't created a Facebook fanpage for this blog. Yet...
   
   
5. Oh. Umm. Lastly. About that race and long run this past weekend. First and foremost, I'd like to place full responsibility on Shaun Gregory Smithies for the massive consumption of hefeweizen that occurred on Saturday, April 10th. There generally is no way that 7 hours of daydrinking will bode well for athletic performance. Case in point, Sunday's Run as One 4 miler in Central Park. Despite massive hydration the morning of, I was clearly still in a tipsy/hungover state upon pitching up at the ungodly hour of 8am. Minor details. The course started off on the east side of 72nd Street and proceeded immediately up Cougar Hill in the first mile. After assessing my subprime running condition, I made the intelligent call to run conservatively the first two miles at a 9:30 pace then speed up a bit on the downhills for the final two miles if I was feeling up to it.
   
   Per usual intelligence was short lived. I bounded up Cougar Hill in the first mile, sprinted along rolling hills and passed the second mile marker in under 16 minutes. Against my better judgment, however, I grabbed a water cup at the aid station before mile three to take a tiny sip in order to soothe my parched mouth. Quite possibly the worst call ever. As soon as that ice cold water hit my injured, battered stomach, I thought there was no way I would survive, let alone finish that race. Enter boot and rally - very clearly not my classiest moment. Nonetheless, pulled myself together and finished the race in a skotch over 36 minutes (~9:15 pace). Not as great of a time as I'd hoped for, but the fact that I even crossed the finish line was enough of a victory for me and a legit excuse to skip my planned 8 mile run home. Win some, lose some?