Training Log Archive: TomN

Event: QOC Morven Park
 

QOC "Cowboy Relay" at Morven Park, long course. Really a motala, I guess. 4 short loops with everyone taking the loops in a different order, then a 5th long loop that everyone had in common. Loops 1-4 were easy. Not much navigation required, and there was almost always someone to follow. So the only thing was to go as fast as possible. For those who weren't running, there wasn't much point.

The last loop was as long as the first 4 combined, and there was some navigation involved. I messed up in the weird boulders on the 3rd from last control. A couple minutes lost, but then again it gave me a breather before the last bit of running.

Andy B. and Howie Weinstein were gradually pulling away from me but I could still see them up ahead until the last few controls, and I had passed the next guy around the last map exchange, so my finishing place wasn't really in question. Just had to keep running.

Goddard 2-mile "Fun Run" Fall 2013. Two miles has never been that "fun" for me (the best I can say about it is the torture doesn't last too long), but I've been running this race since the early 1980s, and the time span of the series has its own pleasures. Today's run was not as bad as it could have been.

Lousy training and multiple setback issues have limited my running this year. Those problems were absent last year and I set an unofficial NASA intercenter record for the 60+ age group last fall at 13:12. This year not so good.

I ran even splits, 7:03 and 14:07, and passed a lot of runners in the hills in the second half. Got a bit oxygen-deprived on the run-in and fell back 1 or 2 places. Not my worst time ever, but maybe my second-worst. That's OK, we're all aging. If you can't accept it you can't keep going.

Jogged to the 2-mile start. Did some warm-ups (slow run, race-pace, dynamic stretches, strides). Then a cool-down jog back across campus after the run.