Blog Archives

3/3/08 Buried

The last week has just been insane. Aside from putting in 55 hours at work (which has been pretty common lately), I also threw a surprise party for Kate's birthday, and had her sister over to visit for the weekend. Overall, a lot of fun, but it sure hasn't left much room for training (and no room for writing about it).

That hasn't been an entirely bad thing. I think I've healed up a bit. I seem to be running reasonably well without any debilitating pain the next day. Now, if I can just get some time in the woods and some time to sleep, I might turn in a decent result or two this spring.

3/4/08 Faster than driving

Another reason to run to work: it's faster. Really! OK, it's usually not, but today it was. We got 8 inches of snow during the day (which is a lot for this town). I took the train to Clayton and then ran home from there. Traffic was totally snarled, so I counted how many cars I passed. At times, traffic would start moving so I'd have to count backwards. That made my brain hurt, so I gave up, but I was around +300 and I don't think I lost many places after that (I was only a mile from home when I stopped counting).

My commute time for the 17-mile trip home was 2:08 (including 3 minutes waiting for the train and 15 minutes riding it which cut the run down to around 12 miles). It was tough running in such deep snow, but fun. I would have gone nuts sitting stationary in a car for that long.

3/5/08 March Mapness, 2008

This year I'm going to repeat the intense map training. I'm going to do it a little different this year. Rather than focus on simply getting out on a map every day, I'm going for 4-5 quality sessions each week. A "quality" session will incorporate at least one of the following:

1. Technical navigation.
2. Map reading at or close to VO2Max.
3. Very meticulous terrain interpretation (e.g., mapping).

3/8/08 S-F

SLOC put on a meet today at S-F. The course was a bit on the easy side, which was a little disappointing given that S-F is some of our best technical terrain. However, it was still a lot of fun to run fast in the open woods. David Frei, Jeff Sona, and I drove down early because we had to get back for Doug Nishimura's wedding. David got me by three minutes. Not sure how the rest of the field did.

3/9/08 Wedding bells for Doug

Actually, I don't recall hearing any bells, but Doug and Sara did get married yesterday. A better looking couple would be mighty tough to find. You'd also be hard pressed to find two nicer people. I just hope Doug doesn't gain 60 pounds in his first year of marriage like I did - I have enough trouble keeping the boat straight without putting an extra sack of concrete in the bow.