Still not right

Managed two miles on the treadmill followed by a mile on the roads today but my knee is still not right. It's weird, I can't feel any pain at all walking around, etc. and when I start running. Then gradually the ache comes on and my knee hurts when I try and lift my knee fully. It was better today than it has been but it's starting to get a bit worrying now.....

Watched a great DVD the other night, 'Clash of the Titans' a documentary about Coe and Ovett's duels in the 80s. Jeez how amazing were those guys! Breaking world record after world record within days of each other! And the Moscow races, what freakin' drama!! Those were the days. Now it's an achievement if a Brit middle distance runner gets to the final of a major event.

Other than that not much to report. I'm so busy at work it seems I'm spending every waking hour there at the moment. Getting home just in time to put the kids to bed. This has got to stop, as has my knee pain!

And the Thursday night game only being on NFL network is bullshit!! 20-10 after a quarter and I can't watch it in my own home....

Goals set

Back to the daily grind today after a nice relaxing holiday

Not much to report on the running front. Bruising and swelling of right knee has almost gone now and quad okay. Sunday I was itching for a run, if only to burn some of the 4 million calories consumed the last few days but decided not to at the last minute. So have done nothing at all apart from core exercises the last few days. The bike didn't tempt me in the end. I just couldn't be bothered- it wasn't as if i was needing to cross train because I knew I would be off running for a good while.

I actually got up and hit the roads for a mile this morning but knee still didn't feel quite right so i turned back home and didn't push it. I'm hoping another couple of days and the knee will have cleared up completely. No point in starting my next phase of training until 100% healthy. Basically once I start running again I'll be setting out on my quest for some big prs on the track in the spring so it doesn't make much difference if I start tomorrow or next week.

So I discussed with Tim and decided that I should target 15.20s and sub 32 as very challenging but realistic goals for the next few months. Might sound a tad ambitious considering that I have only ever gone sub 33 once and sub 16 three times in the past year but I'm going to go for it. So I have posted the goals to my fridge. The 150 refers to my weight. I like that as my racing weight and the combination of the coming winter, the last few days of gluttony and my current inactivity has pushed me significantly over that at the moment!

Hopefully next time I post I will have a run to report!

Merry Christmas

So Thanksgiving has come and gone and my wife is up in the attic getting our christmas decorations out. I'm sure Christmas used to be at the end of December?

No run today obviously. Just some sit ups and press ups in a vain attempt to burn as many calories as I have shoved down my neck in the past two days. Other than that a nice family day. Joined the millions spending more than the third world debt this morning, went for a nice walk in the woods this afternoon and watched the unbelievable LSU game- if anywhere can stage a dramatic finale to a sporting match up it is here!! It seems noone actually wants to win the title this year!! Looking forward to the Kansas Missouri game tomorrow night...

Oh and then we put our decorations up...

Knee and quad pretty much the same as yesterday, will probably get out on my bike tomorrow

Perspective

Didn't race today. Warmed up with Tim and Joe but could immediately tell I wasn't going to be able to race. After 2.5 miles I stopped and walked back to the starting area and watched the race instead. Tim and Joe both put in solid performances. It was weird watching the race from the sidelines but there was no way I could have run. What I found really funny was the amount of people who actually walked the whole race. Now I'm not going to get all elitist and snobby here- the more people getting off their backsides and doing something the better- but I am just shocked by the amount of people who were willing to fork out $20 and well, go for a walk!!

There was some Mainwaring interest in the races today however, as Emily improved on last year's performance to place third in the Tot Trot. She loved it!

As I sit here now my knee has swollen up big time and has a huge bruise on it. I also seem to have strained my quad probably due to over-compensating the last couple of days running through the knee injury so it's time to put my feet up again I guess! The only good thing about this is the timing. No races for the next few months planned so when I get back out there I should be mentally and physically refreshed and looking forward to training for the track

Everything was put in perspective today anyway when a friend of mine told me his brother-in law had lost his battle with Cancer overnight. Spare a thought and a prayer for him and his family tonight....

Finished Once a Runner last night and will be straight into Again to Carthage tonight. "What was the secret, they wanted to know; in a thousand different ways they wanted to know The Secret. And not one of them was prepared, truly prepared to believe that it had not so much to do with chemicals and zippy mental tricks as with that most unprofound and sometimes heart-rending process of removing , molecule by molecule, the very tough rubber that comprised the bottom of his training shoes. The Trial of Miles; Miles of Trials. How could they be expected to understand that?"

2-3

Q: What do you get if you cross a bunch of overpaid, clueless, prima donna tossers and a shit manager?

A: The England football team

Enough said on the subject



Still 50/50 for tomorrow. I managed 7 today at 6.55 pace and actually felt really good, but my right knee is still swollen and when i tried to push the pace I could definitely feel it. The prospect of running 5 miles at 5.20 pace seems a bit far fetched at the moment but we'll see how i wake up in the morning. I have already picked up my chip and number so will probably end up running the race but I've never had a DNF and I don't intend to start tomorrow! Emily has no such injury concerns and will be running the Tot Trot.

No quotes today, didn't get to read much today yet

Happy Thanksgiving to you all. Enjoy yourselves, eat lots and take time to remember those less fortunate than ourselves

New goals

So today I was just taking it nice and easy checking out the course for Thursday's race when all of a sudden, "Crash!" I'm arse over tit on the pavement (sidewalk) and clutching two sore knees. Quick brush down and check that I haven't broken my watch and I'm off and jogging again, feeling sore but okay to run. Finished the run okay (5.2 miles at 7 pace, legs feeling better than yesterday) but my right knee stiffened up all day at work and I'm touch and go whether I can run tomorrow and race Thursday. I should be okay at least for Thursday but really want to run tomorrow as I'm on a three week streak of running every day, my longest such run ever!

After all that excitement it was off down town after work to attend the Grand Prix awards ceremony and pick up my 4th place overall award. It was good to catch up with people I haven't seen for a while and funny to see everyone in their 'civvies' and out of their running uniforms! The Grand Prix here really is an excellent event and it will be interesting next year to see what changes they make.

Also discovered that they have had so much interest for the Thunder Road Marathon in a couple of weeks that they are having to cap the amount of entrants! Not quite sure why more entrants can't be accommodated, but just shows how much bigger the event is getting each year. I hope they get better weather than last year when I ran my first and only marathon and it was frigid!



This year I'm planning on doing the 5k rather than the marathon! That will be my last planned race for a while. Last week I mentioned that I'll need something over the Winter to aim towards and Tim has come up with the goods, convincing me that I should join him and a few other guys in targetting some fast indoor/outdoor track races in early spring. So that's the new goal ahead. I've never really trained over winter with any specific goals in mind before so it will be interesting to see how it goes.

Two quotes today, one to temper Mindi's caution about the feasts ahead this week "if the furnace was hot enough, anything would burn" and the other just a classic to sum up our sport and how it can make us feel. "Running to him was real, the way he did it the realest thing he knew. It was all joy and woe, hard as diamond; it made him weary beyond comprehension. But it also made him free."

Knackered

Judging from Tim's reaction when i first used this expression, a translation may be in order here so here is the definition from Wikipedia

"Knackered meaning tired, exhausted, (especially in reference to exhaustion after sex) or broken in British and Irish slang is still commonly used in the Republic of Ireland, the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth"

Replace 'sex' with 'running' (unfortunately) and you get how i felt on today's run. Trudged through 9.5 miles at about 7.15 pace. Legs felt like shit. I think the last few days have caught up with me. Hopefully I can kick back into shape before my race on Thursday!



Mindi wanted more quotes so the quote for the day is "the leanest wolf is the leader of the pack"- food for thought for us runners over the holidays- make sure we don't eat more than three helpings of turkey and the trimmings for dinner on Thursday....

Once A Runner

Got my copy of 'Again to Carthage' this week but decided to re-read Once a Runner first so I could get to know Cassidy again. Just a couple of chapters in and already remembering how many classic quotes there are in this book! In fact I may try and include one each day until I finish this book. How about this one which relates to my post about the 'food chain' I posted the other day?

"In the world of the runner, as in the ocean, there is a hierarchy of ferocity. The swift blue runner is eaten by the slashing barracuda, which is eaten by the awesome mako shark. In track, such relative positions are fixed more or less in black and white and are only altered at telling expense"

While we're quoting there is also Cassidy's shirt which reads "GAUNT IS BEAUTIFUL". I need to be wearing that shirt next time my mother comments that I could with a few more of her hot meals inside me...

Other than reading it's been a pretty busy weekend so far. Yesterday am was a 15 mile run with Tim and Scott, who joined us for the first few miles- good to have you back out there Scott, but less criticism of my blog please! If I want to talk about FOOTBALL, I will- I may have some readers beyond these shores you know! Speaking of which, somewhat miraculously Israel beat Russia yesterday leaving the door open for England to clinch qualification on Wednesday with a draw against Group leaders Croatia. They don't deserve a second chance but they've got one and I'm not complaining!

Back to the run and when i stopped the watch at the end yesterday I was surprised to see we had run at 6.30 pace average. We'd just been chatting away on a pretty hilly route and hadn't pushed it at all. Good signs...

Then it was round to Tim's for a 'fooball party' as we watched his Ohio State boys almost completely shut out Michigan in a dour contest. Then to Monkey Joe's with the kids so that I could be a kid and go up and down all the inflatables with Emily.

Today's run was 2.5 mile warm up, 5k in 16.40 over the Mcalpine Creek course that we train on all the time which hosts the Footlocker Regionals next week, 10 minute recovery and then 2*1k with a minute in 3.09/3.13. We were meant to be doing 4 originally, but we ran the 5k a lot quicker and harder than anticipated and my legs felt like jelly after 2 so we called it quits. 2 mile jog home and it made it a good 9.15 mile work out. Taking it easy now until Turkey Trot on Thursday.

Emily and Mom went out for the day today so I'm looking after Soph. She's napping at the moment (hence the long post!) but will wake up just in time to spend the afternoon watching (American) football with me. Can't beat a bit of Daddy/daughter time in front of the tv!!

I'll be back again tomorrow with another quote no doubt

Pleasantly sore

Went for my massage this evening. Spent the whole hour having work done on my calf and troublesome foot and currently feel sore but all the better for it. My 15 miler planned tomorrow could be interesting! It's always an eye-opener getting a sports massage. All the knots and adhesions you knew you probably had are painfully revealed to you. My masseuse said my foot felt like a string of pearls, which she then proceeded to 'crack' one by one. Anyway we'll see how it goes over the next few days, I'm going to book myself in for a more 'general' deep tissue massage in a couple of weeks.

Run today was the standard 7.4 at 7 pace in Mcalpine. Beautiful crisp 34 degrees morning. Long may these type of mornings continue. And so ends my 'cutback' week. Back ramping up the mileage again next week. 15 planned tomorrow and a workout of 3 mile tempo followed by 4*1k on Sunday.

Meanwhile in Austria, England laboured to a meaningless 1-0 victory and Michael Owen predictably got an injury which puts him out of our potentially crucial game against Croatia next week. Well done the FA for organising the match, I hope you got sufficient revenue from it.

Hope everyone has a good weekend- nice three day week ahead!

Speed play

Emily decided to be a nightmare last night (the mysterious cough which only seems to surface at night) so i got what seemed like about three hours sleep. The alarm went off at 5.45 and I could barely open my eyes. I could hear the rain lashing down outside (Lord knows we need it but still....) and the planned workout was losing its appeal. Still, as usual, headed out and met Tim at the prescribed time. There I am running across the trails to our meeting point in almost pitch darkness, drenched to the bone and I'm thinking "most people would think I'm nuts for doing this" but anyway there I was

Workout ended up being 8.5 miles including fartlek of 1,1,2,2,4,2,2,1,1 min 'on'/off. As we were half way through our third 'on' segment a guy flew past us coming the other way. It was the guy who won the 5k on Saturday- that is why I'm out in the dark and rain too! So it went pretty well. we started off at about 5.30 pace but were down to 5.10 by the end. Still felt flat from doing Tuesday's workout but I love doing fartlek as you can run as hard as you feel like it and aren't aiming to hit a specific split or distance, etc. 'Speed play' indeed.

Was supposed to be getting a sports massage tonight but have had to reschedule because of work commitments. I bet Paula Radcliffe doesn't have these problems!

England play Austria tomorrow in what must be the most meaningless and irrelevant friendly international of all time. If Russia and Croatia win on Saturday we are out of the 2008 European Championships and I won't know what to do with myself for that month!

Food chain

Ran the usual 7.4 mile loop this morning at 7 min pace with Tim. Legs felt dead from last night's workout but will hopefully kick back into shape before tomorrow's planned fartlek. During the run I put the question out there "How fast do you think you could run if you could do this full time, as your job, just eating, sleeping and living for running?". An interesting discussion ensued with us basically coming round to the same conclusion- that we all pretty much have our place in the running food chain. We all train pretty much as hard as we can given what else is going on in our lives and even if we were able to devote all our time to our hobby, would we really get that much better at it?

What do people think about this? I look at my prs on the right and most of them were set in 2005 when i was running 35-40 miles per week but probably most of them at 6-6.20 pace. Now I'm running 60-70 miles per week, most of which over 7 minute pace. My times have pretty much stayed in the same ball park for the last 5 years. i'm trying to unlock that last bit of potential in me but maybe I'll always be just behind Tim and way behind ex Hanson's guy who rocked up at the race I ran on Saturday. That's my place in the food chain and so be it. Don't get me wrong I'm still striving for prs and improvement, I'm just recognising the fact that hard work can only take me so far and there are so many other variables that need to be in line to be able to move higher up that chain.

Tuesday track night

I usually do a track workout every Tuesday night. My boss knows I'm going to leave no later than 5.15 on a Tuesday. Meetings are rearranged to accommodate my peculiar hobby. So tonight I hit the track. Workout was 4*1600 with 90 seconds recovery. I was aiming to hit 5k pace which equates to about 5.10 for 1600 based on my race on Saturday so was pleased with 5.08,5.07,5.05,5.07. The first one was very easy, the last I was definitely straining a lot more than I would have liked but the signs are I'm getting back into pretty good shape. Thanks to Chris L btw for pushing me on the first three- so much easier than doing a workout on your own!

On a side note I was amused to see how my Garmin is completely confused when I run round and round a track. The mile beeper was going off about 1500 metres into each rep so my training log says i was running at about 4.30 pace- nice!

Taking it for granted

So it's nice to be running pain free again. All summer I was fighting injury and at the time you're thinking how great it would be (and how far off it seems) to be able to train without worrying about breaking down at any moment. Then when you get that feeling back you risk just taking it for granted and not fully appreciating it. So I'm making sure I enjoy this time and do all I can to prevent recurrence of my injury.

Of course just enjoying running for the sake of running is a lot easier when you haven't got any specific goals to shoot for, which is pretty much the case for me at the moment. Other than the obligatory turkey trot next week I have no races mapped out on the calendar. The problem is I love racing and I need goals so I'm going to have to sit down and map out the next few months soon or I'll risk becoming aimless and less motivated. We'll see....

Meanwhile Wayne (only just) came up short and I'm 6 and 4 and a virtual shoe in for the play offs. My 'reality' team the Seahawks are playing as I write but I can't watch it as we are recording 'Heroes' and I can't watch one channel and record another!

Today was an easy 7.4 at 7.03 pace with buddies Tim and Joe as the sun rose over Mcalpine Creek. Tomorrow I have a tough track workout planned after work

A good day- so far

Today started off nicely with a bit of a lie-in as i had no long run planned and the kids were cooperative (ie. purposefully put to bed later last night!) and then i was able to watch Man U stuff Blackburn 2-0 on Fox Soccer Channel to go top of the Premier League for the first time this season.



Then I headed out for my run while the kids napped. This week is a cutback week so instead of my usual Sunday long run I headed out for an hour or so. The weather was beautiful, I love this place for that- as you can imagine running shirtless in November back in England would be unthinkable! I was really rolling today, one of those days where you just feel great. I ticked off 9.6 miles on the trails with the last three at 6 minute pace, and my troublesome heel didn't play up at all. (I had pf issues all summer and am only just back on the road to recovery).

Watched the Panthers suck at home again but my fantasy team did great thanks to messrs Roethlisberger and Westbrook. The 'so far' in my title refers to the fact that I was 30 points up on my colleague at work but my team is done while he has Reggie Wayne and at the half he has a touchdown and 80 yards and Manning will be throwing the ball left, right and center second half as they are down on the Chargers

Friends came over this evening for pizza and beers so yes an all round good day- so far

Runway Run

Well let's start off this with a race report from yesterday's Charlotte Airport's first annual 5k run.

As the name would suggest, this race was actually run at the airport. The race started and finished on one of the runways! It was a really well organized race and has the potential to become a big race in the area. The course was much more interesting than the usual trawl through the same old neighbourhoods. Running on a runway while other planes were taking off and landing was pretty neat!

I came 4th in 16.12 which was a pretty fair reflection of where my training is at the moment so I was happy wih the effort. The race was won by a new guy to the area who apparently used to run with the Hanson Group. A bunch of new studs appear to be converging on Charlotte which can only be good for the local racing scene

Running with Mainers

So I regularly read Tusca's, Tom's, Runninlaw's, Salty's, etc. blogs and have decided to throw my hat into the ring. So here it is, take it or leave it, a little blog about my running and anything else I decide to throw into the mix