Cursed Realm of the Faceless Ghost

I went out for a very short run with Catherine and Elliott this evening. We wanted to check out a little bike path I've been seeing since we moved in here, so after dinner with the siblings we hopped in the car and headed over. It turned out to be a very short path. How short? Try 0.33 miles. We ran three laps, which was all we had time for before it started getting too cold for Elliott. 

I read Scott Jaime's blog for the first time in a long time yesterday and was interested to see what he had to say about treadmill workouts. I've been having trouble doing more than a couple of miles at a time lately, and I remembered that I need to throw in some sort of intervals to distract me and keep me going. I borrowed a concept from Jaime and, after a warmup, increased the speed by 0.2 mph every quarter mile. I'm sure I could work backward and figure out where I started and how long I went, but I don't want to. By the end of my five miles I was at 10.7 mph, and I was feeling it. Good run. 

I've overslept a couple of times this semester after problems with my cell phone alarm, so I've been thinking I should buy a backup clock. And since Catherine absolutely had to wake up early tomorrow to meet someone, I figured tonight was as good a time as any to do so. But it was late when I made the decision, so only WalMart was still open. Which was fine, because it gave me a destination for my run. The store turned out to be closer to home than I thought (just over 2 miles), but it was nice to run outside. For some reason, anything faster than 8:30 feels frantic to me indoors, but sub-7 outside feels pretty relaxed. 

Back at the gym tonight for a half hour run. For the most part, it was a mellow cruise on the flats. I also threw in 10 minutes on the 15 percent grade at a 12:00 pace, and that was pretty rough. 

More outdoors miles tonight. Only five, but it was nice. And more importantly, I've been able to maintain some sort of consistency this semester. The miles may be low, but at least my knee doesn't hurt. 

I was back to my mini loop tonight. I guess I'll make it up tomorrow. 

But maybe I don't have to. Because I'm an undertrained wimp, I emailed Jim Skaggs this morning and asked him to switch me to the 25K next week. I figure I've already proven to myself (three times!) that I can run a 50K without proper preparation. But I've only run a 50k once after a solid block of training. That time I won the race and set a course record (a soft record, but a record nontheless). Probably not a coincidence. 

Anyway, going forward I'd like to do less of the former and more of the latter. So far my knee has been holding up well enough under my light training load. No need to mess that up in one day. Instead, I'm going to run hard and enjoy the race. From there, I'll start slowly increasing my mileage. With any luck, my knee will cooperate and I'll be able to put in another honest race effort mid to late summer. Right now I'm thinking Katcina Mosa, Speedgoat, or Mt. Disappointment (in California), but we'll see how things unfold.  

I was planning to go outside and hit the trails today, but after spending all morning in the wind and cold with Catherine and Elliott at the Rex Lee Run, I decided I'd rather run indoors. So this afternoon we left Elliott with Catherine's sister and went to the Gold's in Sandy. I ran 12 miles and change: one at 10:00 on the flat, one at 6:40 on the flat, one at 10:00 on the flat, one at 10:00 on the 10 percent grade, and so forth. Not a bad workout.