A Passion for Running

Hey everyone!

Thanks for all the encouragement for my race tomorrow! It’s going to be tough to reach my goal but I’m looking forward to giving it my all.

I went for a slow, short run at lunch today. I am definitely going to have to keep an eye on the amount/intensity of biking I do because I’ve got pain in my knee that I haven’t had since before I started. It is a sharp, shooting but very brief pain in my right knee. It happens very rarely and goes away after 5 minutes of warm-up but I still better watch myself or I might regret it.

I got a small run in yesterday and biked today. I might skip my run today and do an easy one at lunch tomorrow.

All this because Thursday is Canada Day and I’ll be in a 15k race and want to be fresh.

I already told Tom that running 20 miles on Saturday is out. The race on Thursday means there is no way I’d be doing that anyway and neither will Tom unless he has a death wish or something!

My goal for Thursday is to run it in 7:45 minute miles.

It’s going to be very very difficult!

Ok Pam – OUTSIDE!

Seems my country-woman Pamalamadingdong has been dis’n song references I’ve been making in my and other blogs.

Pam, Pam Pam – where would we be without a song in our hearts?

Gag, kak, gag, kak. Pardon me, I think that was a hairball (I’ve been hangin’ around the cats a bit too much).

In closing:

1) Pamalamadingdong is a blatant rip-off of a classic song from Animal House. In other words, people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.
2) Just be glad I haven’t left “hey Mickey you’re so fine, you’re so fine you blow my mind, hey Mickey – ch ch ch hey Mickey ch ch ch” in your head…

…oops.

I arrived 15 minutes early at Scona track yesterday morning and found that Aaron was even earlier and was already warming up. I asked him how his knee was. He answered in a “we’ll see” kinda way.

We chatted about “the plan” which had been to do 2 or 3 mile “intervals” and I told Aaron I wasn’t gonna stick to the plan because of the fatigue I’ve been feeling and because I felt it was too early in the training.

He agreed saying it was too early for both of us and asked what I had in mind so I told him I was going to have some fun with speedwork and do a pyramid workout. Specifically,

200 meter
400 meter
800 meter
1600 meter/1 mile
800 meter
400 meter
200 meter

He seemed pretty happy about the idea but suggested if I dropped th 200′s, he’d feel really comfortable about the workout. I agreed with his reasoning being we’d probably “get stupid” and run the 200′s very fast thereby risking injury.

So – COOL – I was going to have company for my workout!

Then Tom arrived and we broke the news to him. He didn’t look terribly pleased about our decision and we encouraged him to go with what felt right for his training. In the end, he joined us and I think he was happy once we were done.

The workout was perfect. Not too little and not too much. For the most part, we ran each 400 meter lap in 1:45 (a few were faster). So, not particularly fast but a good, disciplined workout nonetheless.

Best of all, recovery on Saturday was quick and I feel mentally and physically much fresher than I did two days ago.

It pays to listen to your body.

As Aaron said, we have a few weeks to play with before we have to ramp things up for October. That’s when “the eye of the Tiger” will return!