Friday afternoon
Blew off afternoon mid-body strength-training in order to be 'nice' (à la Dama) to my wife on our ninth anniversary of weddedness. Then we went to Fogo de Chão for a southern Brazilian meat feast. There are twenty of these restaurants in the US, so if you live in a bigger city check and see if you have one if you love grilled meat. There are constantly circulating servers with 12-15 different cuts of meat -- when you're ready for some more, you just flip over a card and they stop at your table and cut off a slice. That and an above-budget bottle of Petit Syrah had us pleasantly stuffed.
Saturday morning.
11.58 mi / 18.64 km, running
10.01 mm pace
1.1 mi / 1.8 km, walking
64 F /18 C - perfect running temp!
Waking up after a fruitful evening of flesh-loading, I decided it was time to tackle a 12-mile route I'd been thinking about for several months, out to a suburban lake--Lake McCarrons--and then back through St. Paul, past Como Lake and on home. I put on an old album I recorded more than 15 years ago on an 8-track cassette recorder to help me get into a zone and not think about the run too much. The album runs 100 minutes--almost made it through the whole run--then a disjointed jam came on, one where the guitarist and I weren't really connecting but the drummer was doing all he could to make sense of it, kind of a James Blood Ulmer sound. I think I'm going to start listening to some down tempo crap on Pandora. I haven't run with music for a long time, but I think I run a bit better with it, at least once in a while. Still, it's a shame to miss the early morning sounds.
Anyway, around 6:30 am, after a quick coffee, banana, and glass of OJ, I set out at a nice aerobic pace. I thought about doing a slightly faster pace in order to prevent joint fatigue, but this was going to be my longest run ever, by a little less than a mile, so I thought it best to take it easy and make sure I made it all the way. I was prepared to stop and stretch, but I kind of surprised myself and just kept going. So although I only ended up besting my previous long run by less than half a mile, I ended up smashing my PR for longest continuous run by more than four miles.
Around 7-8 miles I was starting to slow down, but then my second wind kicked in, probably the point where I began burning fat reserves, or maybe just the point where all the meat from the night prior had finally been digested. So I kicked up the pace a bit a little bit before I got to Como Lake and joined the stream of morning runners/walkers there.
I had a big smile on my face. Man, I felt great, like I was returning to civilization after a little adventure. A guy pushing 60 ran past me at what musta been something like a 7mm pace. He had a long, lean, classic runner's build. Kind of humbling and inspiring at the same time. He had on huge sneakers, but landed with a nice forefoot strike right under his COG.
A short while later I thought to myself, "well, I didn't run the half marathon last week with Dutchie, maybe I'll add a mile to my planned route and run one now." So a bit after Como Lake I headed south for several blocks and took a different east-west street home instead of Como Avenue. I had to run over some mild chipseal for a bit, which kind of threw me off my entrenched cadence, but it probably helped keep my legs loose. I did some high butt kicks as well.
I was still doing fine, but then at around the 11-mile mark my outer quads started to feel a bit fatigued, and right around that point I lost my sidewalk and had to run through a trucking/train area full of debris and small chunks of glass. It was car window glass, so it didn't really bother me, but I decided to use that as an excuse and stopped a bit farther on and walked the last mile or so home. If it had been a real half-marathon, I would've continued, but I thought it best to obey my recent dictum to never run fatigued. And anyway, I was nearing two hours of continuous running, which I think is a good cut-off for me. I'm still not convinced that really prolonged running is good for you, especially for older runners, so it's probably best to max out around 90-120 minutes. If I ever run more than 12 miles or so, it'll probably be because my aerobic pace has come down. Or not.
So anyhow, a great run, and a real confidence booster; no signs of ITBS or anything like that. When I got home I hosed my legs with cold water, just like I saw one of the 60s New Zealand runners do in a short film about Arthur Lydiard. It felt very rejuvenating--I think there's something to that recovery technique.
