Red Dirt Harriers

Three weeks until a variation of Big Dance where I hope its a party all the way to Boylston Street and I don't leave the show heartbroken. I've made it a point to spend some high-end aerobic quality time out on Cedar Lane and East Lindsey to best invoke a similar stimulus to the quads, hammys, and gastrocs. The last three weeks following the Little Rock debacle I've been holding at 120+ miles and have had some good efforts. Basically, I've tried to just raise the bar from the fall in terms of specific marathon quality perhaps in lieu of the 5-10k modeled work, we'll see what that does for me. Since I've slacked so much with the blog, I'll put up the obligatory sample week for what was a good week for me and open myself up to the critics out there in the ether: M- am 84' and 5 strides pm 49' w/ 8 strides T- am 70' pm 33', 12 x walnut hill(12-15seconds), 5' home W- am 4 mi, 5x 2mi on the roads w/ ~2' jog (10:52,:42,:46,:52,:39), 2...

Got back to the long run with a satisfactory result this morning. I did an easy marathon simulation workout with a 20 minute warmup, 4 miles steady, 55 minutes regular, 5 miles steady, and a mile plus to finish for something in the realm of 20 miles continuous. I was more beat than I would have been a week ago, but I got in a nice groove on the second steady section running 5:45s or so which given my recent recovery from viral bronchitis, I will take. I can't seem to fully knock the chest congestion and coughing but my energy levels seem good. I'm looking into summer plans, which would definitely involve being away from the heat and humidity of Norman. I'm trying to rally any and all parties interested in sharing a cheap pad in cooler climes. Colorado and New Mexico are the obvious contenders but Flagstaff, Oregon, or California would also be acceptable.

Despite continued refusal to operate at full capacity my lungs and the rest of my body completed a couple of runs today, sandwiched around a mostly unscintillating day at NHS. I want to know what makes certain kids think that they can completely disregard an authority figures and argue and interrupt while I try to impose some small level of diligence upon them. I can't imagine a scenario where I would have talked shit to a teacher or substitute in a similar circumstance so I'm just trying to understand if anything has really changed with the youth of today. Oh and cell phones are everywhere in school and they think it prudent to utilize them as often as possible. Add that to the list of things that makes me despise that infernal invention all the more. On a different note, my family headed up to Tom and Jerry's on 23rd St. last night for my mum's B-day. It was a pretty good place (I sadly had to keep the wine to a minimum), but interestingly empty all night. This is an ...

Well this past weekend was supposed to mark my return to racing as I entered the Little Rock 1/2 and had already gone in with Bill for a hotel room. On Friday afternoon when I got out of school my throat was a little sore and my chest was giving me some asthma-like trouble, but having spent alot of my springs in the midwest, this is pretty much inevitable for me and I just try to work with it. Anyway, by the time I got to Tulsa on Friday night, I was feeling rough and after a night of no sleep and alot of hacking and coughing, I felt worse. However, I just decided to go anyway and just do what I could which at this point was obviously not going to be much. I couldn't sleep Saturday night either and was pretty weak and had the chills. Anyway, the race was pretty good sized and there were some good dudes up front in both the 1/2 and full marathons, albeit alot of road carnage along the way as it was a fairly tough course and it was unseasonably warm and humid. I later learned that a ...