CadesDad

I love it when a plan comes together. This morning Shawn forwarded me a workout and this link to help me determine my paces. I put in a HUGE stretch goal and it resulted in this pace chart:

Equivalent race paces:



So I tried to do my workout with these paces. Making my plan look like:

1 mile warmup (at 10 min miles)

2 X 200's @ 6:22 min miles
1 X 400 @ 6:10 min miles
1 X 800 @ 5:22 min miles
1 X 400 @ 6:10 min miles
2 X 200's @ 6:22 min miles

1 mile cool down (starting at 10 min mile)

The 800 got a little speedy for me and with my first 400 done I slowed down to 5:5X. Otherwise I did this workout and at the end the 6:22 pace and 6:10 pace seemed slow! Again, I was sweating up a storm on the treadmill.

The only bummer of this workout is that I wore my new glasses, and they just don't stay up (anyone ever see that Steve Martin movie, "the jerk"? Anyway, so while I'm making my legs move just as fast as I can, my glasses are bouncing off my face. Had to have been a funny image for anyone else in the gym.

This Sunday we had a couple of kids Cades age over for a birthday thing, he had a great time and was a good guy. Kate, Bjorn, Eleanor and Erik gave him a trumpet that he's fallen in love with, see the picture.

Finally! Finally! Finally!

I've learned that being a runner means you have good days and bad days. More important, I've learned to relish the good days and accept the bad days. I don't get (as) down on myself on the bad days. They come and go, and I haven't been able to predict when they'll occur. I suppose if I was more diligent about logging my miles and diet I might find a correlation to say a Dr Pepper here, an extra bowl of cereal there, a bad run here. But I haven't, and I might just not even try.

Saturday morning I woke still tired and quite aching. The ache was from Fridays interval workout - - which was AWESOME. Some time had passed since my last interval workout and although I remembered how much I enjoyed a difficult hard work out that pushed me further than I thought I could go; there's never anything like being in the moment. Friday’s workout was 4x800 at 6:30 pace with a mile warm up and mile cool down. In total I covered 5 treadmill miles and coated my treadmill with sweat (and the edges of the treadmills on either side of me)! To anyone observing this workout it probably looked like a half grotesque freak torture show half gross out sweat-fest. For me, it was AWESOME.

So... Saturday I was a tad sore, had a sore throat and felt generally tired (An aside to any soon to be parents out there, when you buy kiddo a big kid bed, get a good mattress). I told Shawn, who also was not 100%, that I'd feel like an overachiever if we ran 7. She responded with 7 it is! So we started off slowly, hit the parkway and headed to Lake Harriet. At Harriet, we discussed if which way to go and I asked that we slow for the first half, and then speed up on the second half. We followed this plan pretty well, speeding up on the eastern side of the lake, cruising to finish the lake loop. Once back on the parkway, we continued to speed it up and stride out. It felt sooooo good. Shawn and I decided to stop at Caribou which is roughly a mile short of home. What a great way to end our run. We walked in the sunshine drinking coffee the last mile home.

What a great run. It’s nice to have one these once in a while to help on remember why I do this.

This year I stood in the starting chute, not all that excited about being there. Thursday evening Cade came down with a terrible Flu which continued into Friday. Shawn decided that she'd stay back and I waivered on what to do. I couldnt decide if I should skip the event, which wouldn't have been all that bad considering my training, or if I should carry on and run it. In the end, I decided to head up and do it. Cade seemed better on Friday, but neither Shawn or I wanted to risk getting Grandma Corrigan sick or bring Cade to Duluth and putting the Smith kids at risk. So.... at 3:00 or so, I loaded myself into the Subie and north. Kyle and Kim were able to pick up my number at the expo which was HUGE. The off ramp on 35 to get to the expo was nearly a mile back on 35. Crazy.

After watching Will's T-Ball Game, and eating spaghetti at Bulldog. Kyle and I went to get his haircut. While I was sitting waiting for his doo to be done, my phone rang. I answered to sobs, snorts, and cries of, "Daddy..... I want you to come home.....NOW" and then I'm pretty sure he threw up. It was 7:30. Shawn and Cade called me one more time that night and again, Cade got sick. I found out after I got home on Saturday that he was sick every 30-60 minutes all night Friday. Shawn had her own vomit marathon.

After hanging with the Smiths for few minutes Friday night, we all went to bed. I woke at 4:40 to hop in the shower, get changed and drive the 5 minutes to UMD. Grandmas does a great job of bussing people to the start of the race. I got my seat on the bus and went into a psuedo sleep/day dream state. This made the trip to the race start short.

At the race start I went through my usual routine, use the porta johns, stretch, drink some gatorade, eat a clif bar, stretch, use the porta john, check my bags and make my way to the starting line. I was really really pleased to see a 4:15 pace group. I had thought of running with either the 4:00 or 4:30 pacer and had a hard time deciding. My decision was made for me with the 4:15 pacer. I started off okay staying with this group. At mile 3 or so, nature called so I pulled over to get to know nature better. I had gotten ahead of the 4:15 group a bit, so they caught up and passed me here. It took another mile and I caught them again and hung with them a bit longer. I felt pretty crappy quickly, and resorted to walk/running. I don't recall feeling this bad this early in a race, and I considered dropping out, but at the half way mark, I just kept going with the thought of, well, I've made it this far, I might as well finish.

Most of the run was unremarkable. The aid stations were great and to be honest, despite how crappy I felt the run went pretty quickly. At about mile 19 or so, I noticed I was leap frogging with this younger gal in a Loyola shirt. She would jog along slowly, looking tired but keeping steady. People along the course would shout, "Go Loyola!" and she'd pump her fist in response. Anyway, so she'd pass me when I'd walk, and I'd pass her when I ran. At about mile 23, I'd had enough, and this was good, as it gave me something to fight for. So I made it my mission ton not let the fist pumping loyola t-shirt chick beat me. I dropped my arms down and ran. I turned around with about a mile to go and she was gone, I couldn't see her behind me. I kept up the pace just to be sure and crossed the finish in 4:42:something.

All in all it was an okay run considering I haven't really done much specific training for this marathon. Next up is Lifetime Fitness Triathlon and the Twin Cities Marathon. I swear I'm gonna traing for the TC and I will break 4 hours.
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