The Trifecta

Did my 3rd hard run in 3 consecutive days this morning. 12 miles in 1:47. I am not sure but that might be a PR. I'm pretty sure if I had run another 1.3 miles it would have been a 1/2 mary PR.

I knew I had to run before work today, and I didn't really want to run on the treadmill. I woke up at about 5:05AM, had 2 cups of coffee and my usual breakfast bar (Powerbar Triple Threat), loaded up my hydration bottle with 32 oz. of grape Gatorade, and I was out the door at 6:10AM. I can't just wake up and go, as I like my coffee, and well, it gets things moving, so I like to have about 1 hour until I start exercising.

I stretched a little last night knowing I would be running early today, and I wondered how my legs would feel running hard for 3 days in a row. My legs felt fine when I woke up today--there was a little residual soreness in my adductors was all.

When I am doing my shorter runs, I just can't mentally get myself to run as slowly as I should during a warmup, but when I know I'm going long, I get myself in the right place to run a slower pace, and I can usually tell from the first mile how the run is going to go.

I would like to have had time to drive to my hilly trail place (Waterfall Glen) to run, but that meant I would have needed to be up even earlier, so I took my chances that I could bang out a 1:45 run on the roads. I used to do all my summer running right from home, but the roads beat up my legs after awhile, which is why I am OK with lots of treadmill running in late fall and throughout winter.

So I decided to just run out my door, along the same area I ran yesterday, knowing full well that I would get > 3 solid miles of hill running. Even though I was supposed to do a progressive run today ending in tempo, I knew that with the route I was running and given the hard work of the 2 previous days that it would be OK to run more or less a steady pace, given the terrain, and just ensure that I didn't slow down.

As I started, my feet were not too happy to be on asphalt again, but after they surrendered, they were fine. I had no residual soreness in my quads from the last few days of training, and I felt surprisingly peppy, considering I hadn't run this early in the day for weeks.

Mile 1 was 9:28. Perfect. If I averaged 9:30 today, that would be fine. I hung out around from 8:50-9:15 for most of the run, and I ran strongly up all the hills with no walking. Technically, I was supposed to run for 1:45, but as I approached 6 miles out I figured I may as well make it an even 12. The actual temperature was about 75, but the humidity was 85%, so I was soaked through and through, and much of the time I had a puddle of sweat hanging off my chin. Delightful!

As I turned around at Mile 6, I was in a great mood. Maybe it was that I hadn't run this route in so long, maybe it was because it was still early in the day and I was watching all these commuters waiting for their train while I was out running, which made me think how we all make choices in our lives to be able to do what we want to do. Been there, done that as far as the daily train commute to downtown Chicago. I had absolutely no excuse not to be happy today. I was feeling the effort in Miles 6 and 7, as they are on total concrete, and I just imagine my legs turning to hamburger, but then I know that I'll be back on the relatively softer asphalt in no time.

Mile 8 is flat for the first 1/2 mile and then the hills begin on the return trip. I suppose because of the humidity and because I had a belly full of coffee I wasn't drinking much of the Gatorade, and it wasn't that hot either, and as I got to the beginning of the hills, I just didn't even stop to drink and kept running. I saw at least 10 other runners this morning, but none of them were carrying any fluids, so I assumed they weren't running too far.

As I began to ascend the second half of Mile 8, there was a guy running the same direction who passed me up. He had this look on his face like he's such a stud or something, but no worries, I knew he wasn't running 12 miles today. He crested the first hill a little ahead of me, stopped, bent over like he was going to puke or something and I just kept running uphill. See I am tough and I just keep going.

I had to wait briefly at a stoplight after a good, steep 1/2 mile climb, and then I got a bit of a downhill for about .1 mile before the next climb started. As long as I kept looking down just at the 2 feet of road in front of me I really didn't notice the uphill grade too much, and my cadence was perfect, so I just kept going.

Up the next hill, and then I got another brief downhill in preparation for the 1 mile hill. The 1-mile hill, which is the stretch of road between Clarendon Hills Road and Cass Avenue is a killer no matter when you run it (provided you charge it), and it's especially heinous when it comes 9 miles into a 12 mile run. Yesterday I ran up the fucker in about 8:20. Today would not be so fast! But, I managed 9:22 up it, and I was pretty happy with that. I wanted to bail and walk several times, but told myself no, today I am tough and will not give in, even though this is not a race.

After that, it's mostly flat for the last 2 miles home, but I always slow down on the mile after the 1 mile hill because I am trying to recover. That was my slowest mile of the day, 9:43! Crap, that is slow! But it is what it is, and I figured I'd pick it up on the last mile, and I did.

So 12 miles in 1:47, and my average HR was only 119, which is like Zone 2 (out of 5), or pretty damn easy. Not bad, and this made me feel like I should go and run an open 1/2 mary just to see what I can do actually racing the damn thing. It's totally cool to see improvements to your running in the back end of a long training season. Every fall as I back off somewhat on the training hours, I am surprised to see my running speed improve a little more since the prior year, but then I keep thinking maybe this is it, maybe I'm done getting faster. But I'm seeing some nice improvements to my running right now, so it looks like fall/winter will be another opportunity to see more improvements as long as I stay injury-free. Triathlon running is all about biking smart and running tough. It's easy to ride a bike fast, but it's not easy to ride a bike fast and THEN run at a good clip, but I feel pretty good about both sports right now. And I STILL don't consider myself a runner :) But hey, if I can do better at Goofy Challenge in 2007, that is really all I am looking for in the short term. And oh yeah, kicking butt at Miami Man would be a nice touch, too.

Now if I can just get through that ride on Saturday, this will go down as one helluva training week!