Friday, June 15, 2007

Week 3, or is it 4, in spain


The image in the left has nothing to do with what follows. maybe it does. it is a place i was yhanging out at for a few days... The decAY is setting in fast. Today I ran that race with Vince. I had to get up at 4 AM. yesterday i attended Sonar, an all day music festival, drank profusely since noon and smoked herbal products. I got to bed at 1 AM. I woke up hungover, and not fit for racing purposes (or any other purposes for that matter). I put on my race shorts backwards, stumbled into my shirt and shoes and got out of the house. Vince was perky and well groomed at 5:00 AM, looking like he stepped out of J Crew's centerfold. i looked haggard, drunken, unshaven, amd generally unfit for good company. We proceeded to the race, a 5k with some farmaceutical gurus and doctors. There were about 200 runners. Really, only 10 - 20 looked remotely like runners. The rest was an assorted group of sweat pant banadana wearing walkman listening jawgers. Amazingly, the race was chip timed, well marked, accurate and well organized.

When the gun went off, I felt like throwing up right away but managed to keep it in. Vince darted ahead and took the head of the pack at a slightly sub six pace. I followed him, keeping my eyes on his perfectly matched ensemble. I was trying to catch up with him to work out a deal by which we would both slow down until the last quarter mile, since there was nobody immediately behind. No such luck, Vince cranked and I held on. Finally, he started slowing down after we passed the 2 mile mark and I went by him. I broke the tape (first time) in the not so fast time of 18:47.

Now its back to bed.

See yall soon,

Ed

Thursday, June 14, 2007

New Training Plan

I’ve recently put together a new training plan for this summer. The plan is designed to fit well on your fridge to be a constant reminder to get out there and run. Of course, you can easily adapt this to your own specific training needs. This planner is the culmination from several sources to blend in with our already existing races and training runs:

  • From Pfitzinger I took the overall phase development and long run target mileage.
  • From the McMillan Calculator I set the intensity levels (adjust to your needs)
  • Incorporated the major Chicago medium long tune up races
  • Incorporated our CARA Tuesday evening LT runs.
  • Incorporated our Friday morning "Ledesma" Montrose Hill Workouts
  • Threw in a few “over-distance” runs.

Hope you find this useful. Also, I am hoping that we can at least get our schedules in synch enough for a field trip or two to knock out the over-distance runs. Please let me know if you have suggestions for improvement. Download here.

Monday, June 11, 2007

North Shore Half

Congrats to Richard on an outstanding race at the North Shore Half on Sunday.

Though his 1:23:54 is likely not a PR at this distance... it was an outstanding time in the heat and humidity in Highland Park. Rick has the burden of being in the ultra-competitive 35-39 age group. As a result, his great finish was still only good for 7th in that age group.

Here are the race results:

http://www.northshorehalf.com/results/2007results.php

It's a nice course with some rolling hills and one steep but short hill around 9 miles into the race. We were serenaded throughout the race by the calls of cicadas. It's really amazing how loud those bastards are.

Jordan Dubow won the race. The race finishes with a lap around the track. You may recall that Jordan's brother Jeremy's favorite story to tell is the one where Jordan was arrested while running on a track some years ago when some old bag claimed he brushed her while trying to get around her. She called the cops and they arrested him - forcibly removing him from the track. Well ... this was the same track. Jordan avoided arrest on Sunday and cruised to an easy victory. Though there may have been some offensive touching during the race -- that was done mostly by Cahn.

Great race Rick.