Describe Your Running Today, Part II

driske,

Concentrate. Focus. You know how to take care of yourself and overcome. Eitherway, nobody and nothing, can take away from you, the good of who you are, the good of what you have done.

How's Fish?

today: Villa Pamphili, campone, on grass, striders, drills, intense quadrupedia.

I am mixing my foot and walking drills: after almost a year of long-distance reps, i am switching frequently from one drill to the other. This is actually stimulating some new movements which are a result of the attempted fast transition. Confusing at first but feels damn good. On the way to refining the patterns.

-520 days to MOARG in Gimmelwald 2011

45 mins on the windtrainer. A tough session, 20 mins warmup, shifting thru the gears every 5 mins while on the small chainring. From there it's onto the big chainring and 4,3,2,1 min as I shift thru to top gear. Then I come back a gear at a time at 1,2,3,4 mins. 20 mins at a continuous high intensity. It's toughest on the way back down the scale. 5 mins easy spin to finish.

TPCB, can you clarify your "intense quadrupedia" for me? I have my own interpretation of what it is but may be well off the mark.

mopak, i lolled so hard when i read about your possible interpretation...i mean, like i lolled off the seat...

Anyway, i did some more today...what's intense about moving on all fours is to be doing it at varying speeds, varying lower limbs/upper body angles and for continuous stretches up to 100m. Then what i often do as heart rate is maxxed out and my ventilation is peaking, i try to do a 100m stride as soon as i have gotten back on two feet. For me this is quite intense: i sweat like a hog and i feel lacto-lized.

so today: more exercises, intense quadrupedia, dynamic stretching, striders on grass, threw in a couple of 200s on the track

today: awesome kids athletics, we have a bunch of new kids trying it out.

-518 days to MOARG in Gimmelwald 2011

today: RomaNoLimits Urban on the Tiber River, approx 18k in 1h27 including all sorts of obstacles. Not my ideal run but fine for a sunny sunday. finished 34th.

On the obstacles, especially rope climbs and stairs got this real sense of fat burning going on which stayed on during the rest of the course. it suggests that in a marathon it might be worthwhile to include some regular surges every 3-5k or so to get the fat burning going on too... recovered very quickly.

65 min. recovery on rough trail, 8.5 mi.

easy 11 miles to the TANK from Arapahoe in boulder. 82 minutes. chilly out there!

50' late Friday with part through a new 'hood.....came back with 60' on Sunday through the fog.....no problems (knocking on wood).....driske, the teams are doing well, thank you.....combined record right at .500.....hopefully we'll finish the season on the plus side....thanks for asking....

Rolled through a lazy 49min 10k on saturday evening after a busy day of doing nothing much.

Sunday, a hard uphill road tempo up Mt Alexander -spot on 30mins -return via the Great Divide Trail. 1hour total running time. Then it was off to the local food and wine festival and a giddy walk home along Forest Drive.

Today, a solid paddle on the lake for just over an hour.

Came across the local pelican colony. Also a colony of the ever aggressive masked plovers. It's bad enough when a pair swoop you, today I had 12 of them all going me at once. Also some ibis, black swans, cormorants, wood ducks and mallards. Many of the old dead trees are being used as nesting sites for galahs and cockatoos. Spotted well over a 100 roos grazing on the shoreline. I managed to navigate my way down to the old bridge over the Mt Ida Creek. This bridge was submerged until the last 6-7 years with the lake drying out. It is an easyier launching point for me but I wasn't sure whether it was navigable through to the lake body.

today: typical post-sunday racing chitter-chatter with lunchtime animals in Villa Pamphili, loose running for 40mins, strides, exercises, more chitter chatter...

-516 days to MOARG in Gimmelwald, Switzerland, 2011

AM. 10k course,55:55. Several flocks of Canada geese heading south in V formation. A Great Blue Heron stood quietly in a nearby stream, waiting for bait fish to present themselves. Temp at 45F, tree color at or near peak.

mopak, tpcb, Did you catch gonzo's exit?

re. gonzo: yes. actually when i reread my post about sunday's pseudo-survival rac on the Tiber river relating the heart rate surges during the drills to fat-burning regimen, i thought that one sure way would be to do burpees during a long run!!

So gonzo, where are you?

AM: walk to school, bike comumute.

MOARG -517 days

----

Actually driske, you bring this "missing" people issue today, as i have just metabolized a little personal devastation in front of my kids school.

We had arrived huffy and cheerful (as they tugged on the bike i was pushing so as to go to work directly from there) they ran in the gates to classroom, and just as i was serenely gazing in their multitude-filled direction, this woman came up to me and said: "You are a friend of Sabine, yes?" And i said: "Yes, why?" And just as she started to say "Well yesterday she committ..." I felt like i was punched in the stomach and i actually started to crouch in pain.

She was a friends-of-the-park family friend. She had two beautiful kids, an overworked husband, a friendly dog, a villa, and was usually charged like a solar cell. In the 9 years we knew them, I used to see her all the time when i took my kids on the stroller and for walks. She used to walk, one kid in the stroller, another in the hand also holding the dog on the leash. Very energetic. Lost touch in the last three-years because children grow up and go to school. Depression was mentioned. Other friends had told me she had anorexia but that's not how she passed away. I often profoundly dislike losing touch. Sometimes it is unavoidable. Her husband will now have a very challenging life.

correcting: MOARG should be -515 days.

It would be great to back a day and hope some things could be changed.

PM: walk back from kids gymnastics, parents teachers meeting made for a rest day. so be it.

My humble respects and condolences in the loss of your friend. The pain dealt by untimely death was well described. How can we turn back the clock a day. How that moment once past can never be summoned back. Why?

My prayers to you, her friends, and family.

1:34 on the bike trainer today. Outside conditions were conducive to taking a chance of slipping back into the doldrums. Rain and 42F, all day.

Watched the "Spirit of the Marathon" DVD. Going to Chicago Friday. I want Deena and Joan's autograph.--- There, now I feel like RW material.

I'll run as fast as I can. Before the flu I thought 3:15.

Meh,3:35 now's my guess.

So sad tpcb, it will indeed be an enormous challenge for her husband and children. I hear such stories far too often because of my work. Some people are just not able to get through life intact.

The best a friend can do in such times is to look out for her family.

Tonight was a lazy 66 mins over the McIvor Ranges. Felt flat, tired from working late and starting early -also daylight saving has started. It was still 4am. to my body clock when I got up.

Yesterday morning I did 2hrs on the mtn bike through several forests before work.

Thanks for the heads up on Gonzo. Hopefully he still sifts through our posts. If so I should tell him I was pensioned off because of a foot issue too. But I found a way back to do what I love doing. Hopefully he will too.

Good luck in Chicago Driske, I think you will surprise yourself and run 3.20 despite the missed training.

START Mourning.

driske, mopak, don't know why but this film from a while back came to mind yesterday: "Ordinary People" - living in spite of ourselves, or trying to live beyond survival, our little extra-ordinary lives - it was a sad and distant story in much the same way that the events of others can make you reflect upon the life you live.

It had a wonderfully moving soundtrack which i will cathartically share in a revised, revitalized fashion; impulsed by that incredible contiguity with Running, seemingly doing the same thing over and over again, in reality a winding variation of Life's unique diversity and depth.

Details, inside details, opening windows to look beyond our own existence.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wam-oMub8EU&feature=related

Mourning END.

today: intense 45minute barefoot warmup sequence on grass at paolo rosi track, could have called it quits there and then. Board-inspired 8x800m, 2 mins rest in my vibrams, 3:01, 2:57, 2:58, 3:04, 2:59, 2:58, 2:57, 3:00. Feel emotionally drained.

Whatever that means.

tpcb,

The young guitar man is gifted to be sure. The Canon: always appropriate to lifes major transitions. Thanks for the link.

Fish is nursing a tight knee currently. He won a 9 miler 2 weeks ago on a hilly course, and has been feeling beatup since.

AM. 36 minutes, about 4 miles. Exquisite colors prevail as the northern hardwoods are flat out gorgeous this year.

No traffic, one turkey.

mopak,

It's a comfort to have people interested enough in the mental welfare of their fellow man to pursue employment in those fields.

Being prematurely pensioned off is none too gratifying. Hopefully, gonzo will devise a way out of those straits, as you did.

Brett from Tokyo has a blog. The diversity of posters inhabiting this website continues to amaze.

driske,

re diversity i agree, and you are no exception. i checked Brett's blog: wow, what a mind.

yesterday pm: bike commute

today: AM walk to school and back

lunchtime, 1 hour walk barefoot in villa pamphili. 10 years ago i would have run slowly. But walking on very very easy days makes sense. Slow running can be damaging.