"TRAINING" LOG:I'm still here, but without the consistency of that [damn] marathon training, the motivational opportunities to write are few & far between. My friend Deb has been needling me to start posting again and since yesterday was her birthday (and since I'm a cheap SOB), this is her present.
So what's happened in the past 4+ months?
In a nutshell, it took about 6 weeks to lose the big toenail on my left foot. It only hurt for a few days after the marathon in May, but running with it was pretty uncomfortable, even when wrapped/taped. Simultaneously, work ramped up which broke up the solid consistency of training I'd become accustomed to. I also took a more relaxed approach to my diet and, while I didn't abandon the habits I'd spent the past year forming, I definitely did allow for more indulgences.
The net result of a more careless diet and a less-than-consistent training plan had very predictable results -- loss of conditioning, strength, and what little physique it appeared that I had developed. The last month before the marathon, I started having a "bulletproof" feeling in my workouts -- I could push hard and recover quickly. A month ago I started tracking my diet again and started getting some focus back in the gym.
Only in the past week have I started to get inklings of that "bulletproof" feeling again. My running pace is still at least a minute a mile off what it was a year ago at this time and at least a minute:30 off what it was in May. That's what happens when you go from running 3x and 25 miles a week to 3x a month with the same total mileage. Despite the abysmal running mileage, I'm running a Half-Marathon in a few weeks with my wife (my 3rd, her 1st) and there is certainly not going to a PR in the books for me. Anything under 1:50 will be a miracle.
Once that's over I have something ELSE to look forward to. My jack-ass sister in law had the bright idea of doing the Tough Mudder obstacle course event in Mt. Snow next May, so we all signed up for that. That pretty much means that once this race is complete in November, it's back into the gym to finally start working on building strength while maintaining some reasonable level of conditioning.
I did run the Race to the Top of Vermont again this year and cut about 10 minutes off my time from last year (which was more of a scouting "run" compared to this year's race effort). That'll be a topic for another post though.
