Training Log Archive: ebuckley

With a full day of painting ahead, I got out well before dawn to do some track work. Problem was, my back was still super stiff from painting the ceiling yesterday. I decided to just run until it loosened up, which took over an hour. Felt pretty good after that so I just kept running for a while.

I'm cheap, stubborn, and have an advanced degree in engineering. That's pretty much the perfect storm for home improvement disasters. As a result, I generally don't do such tasks until it's clear that waiting any longer will get really expensive (that is, something will break or Kate will get so fed up she'll hire a professional). While my feeling going into this one was that this was premature (the old paint was old, but there wasn't anything wrong with it), I have to admit that the living and dining rooms look way better now and will presumably look even better after the last coat goes on tomorrow (then again...).

Looks like Bill will be our first guest. He could probably score an upgrade on the wine we'll be serving by saying how nice the room looks.

C • new paint 13

Spent pretty much the whole day getting the living room ready to paint and painting the ceiling. Walls tomorrow. Trim Monday. Was ready to take the day off completely, but my back was pretty stiff after two hours looking up so I went for an easy jog to loosen up.

Expecting the legs to be a bit soft today, I planned to put in some easy miles on the flood plain at Castlewood. That plan would have worked fine if I had brought some heavier clothing. I was dressed for the predicted high of 20F. I don't know what made me think it would be that warm at 10AM. Ambient temp was single digits, but at least it wasn't windy. I had to run up over the ridge a few times to generate some heat.

Even colder than predicted, temp didn't get into the positive side of Dr. Fahrenheit's scale until mid-morning. By afternoon it was a balmy 11F, but other than the cold, it was really nice out. So crew socks, wind brief, poly shorts, subzero tights, poly shirt, fleece, wind shirt, balaclava, gortex hat, lobster gloves, shoes, and I was good to go for an easy jog round the hood.

No power in the legs, but no pain either. Did a lap on the track coming in just to see how ridiculously slow I was going and was surprised to finish it in just under 2 minutes. I guess the bill for yesterday won't come due until tomorrow.

Whacky retort of the day (preceeded by the usual dialog of me telling Yaya to do something and her completely ignoring me):

Me (voice raised): Yaya! Just go upstairs and get a shirt.
Yaya: You're hurting my chin!

WTF!?!

C • Kids' hurting body parts 1

Parked at the horse trailer lot and jogged to/from the trailhead via the bird sanctuary.

Chubb trail. Intended for this to be just a solid 2-hour effort, but right from the outset the legs just felt like goin'. Figured why not let 'em go. Got to the tracks in 28:45 and knew I'd easily be under 2 hours. Got to the Tyson trailhead at 54:54 and realized I had a legit shot at 1:50. Started pushing a bit since the return trip is objectively slower (though I usually run negative splits just because I dawdle the first few miles). Got back to the tracks in 79:10 (holy cow! 24:16!) and realized that this was shaping up to be a PR. Way harder than I need to be running in training, especially the last 28:20 back (a full minute faster than I've ever done that), but a whole bunch of fun. At least now I'll have an excuse for taking an off day during tomorrow's deep freeze.

C • according to the SLUG websi... 2

My usual hill training course at Forest-44 (1:15). Eleven different uphill legs of 90-180 seconds with roughly equal recovery following each.

Despite legs that were more springy than expected, I stuck to the plan of an easy day today and did a Green length course at Babler (1:10) Seems like forever since I ran on 1:10. This navigation thing is so much easier when you can read the map. I may have to quit running Blue simply because I can't read 1:15 on the run anymore.

Then hustled back to watch Yaya's first Tae Kwon Do class. She did a much better job of paying attention than I expected. It might be just the thing for her. She sure did enjoy breaking her first board. White Pine - nature's version of styrofoam.