Back in business

It's 10:14 p.m. and hopefully by holding off until now to administer this blog's daily dose of ridiculousness, I've armed myself with enough material over the past 30 or so hours to keep everyone entertained. Let's see what I got...

...starting with last night's workout. At the conclusion of yesterday's entry I was on my way into Reggie for some interval-laced fun on perhaps the country's fastest 200m indoor track - well, that is when its not being simultaneously inhabited by 45 people running anywhere from 23-5o+ seconds per lap. Believe me, it's a recipe for disaster.

Speaking of disasters, that pretty much describes how my own workout went. The assignment itself was pretty standard: 5 x 1000m w/3 min recovery, going through 800 at 5K pace and then picking it up a smidge over the last lap. Well, let's just say I failed miserably at the picking it up part. I made the unwise decision before we got going to try and run off of Ryan & Justin's pace, which was 2:16-18 through 800 and finishing up in around 2:49-50 or so. That works out to around 14:10-or-so 5000 meter pace, which is about 20-30 seconds faster than what I'm capable of running right now. Needless to say, I dug myself into a pretty good-sized hole by the third interval, running 2:56 after dead-on 2:50's for the first two. I took a bit of a shorter recovery to jump in with Mark for #4 and struggled to a 3:02, but managed to rally on the last one and finished up pretty strong in 2:54, which is closer to where I should have been from the get-go. Overall, it really wasn't that much of a disaster - I just need to be smarter about running my pace without getting caught up in what the other guys are doing. Live and learn, live and learn.

Which bring me to today's wacky weather-related running adventures. I'm not sure if I learned anything from them per se, but I am glad that I lived to share my experiences. I stepped out the door for my run this morning to unseasonably warm temps hovering near 60 degrees, along with Armageddon-like winds that hit upwards of 50 mph and rain that seemed to be coming at me from every which angle. There were points along the route where I was barely making forward progress, others where I was dodging branches like Patches O'Houlihan dodges hammers and stretches where I'm still awaiting ratification on a wind-aided world record for the 100m dash. It was actually kinda fun in a masochistic sort of way. So much so, in fact, I went out and did it again six hours later! On the second go-around I managed to power my way to a 7:59 opening mile and close in a 6:20 on the way back. I felt like one of those Emmanuel College track studs pulling their parachutes around Reggie last night, with the only difference being that there was actually a purpose behind my ludicrousness.

Moving on, I filled the time between my runs today with a little shopping sojourn to the Shoppes in Millbury, stopping at Barnes & Noble where I bought this book, written by one of my fellow cronies in the sports department of this newspaper. I also picked up a pair of these shoes for a paltry 30 bucks at Marshalls, which was a helluva find if I do say so myself.

At the present moment, I'm multitasking like a madman - working on this here entry, planning out my next training block, stopping every so often to read a few pages from one of the three books I'm currently reading, all the while listening to a little Simon and Garfunkel and finishing up a cup of tea/slice of mom's apple cinnamon walnut bread as Leno supplies the background noise with countless GW insults and bitchy remarks about how cold it is in LA today. Not that anyone out there really gives a shit, but hey, after yesterday's pathetic entry I needed to extend the life of this one somehow.

And that's gonna do it for today, thanks for bearing with me. G'night.

Quote of the day:

Bill is always a gentleman around his competition. What they don’t know is that later, we’ll be talking about some guy, and Bill will get this look in his eyes, and say, ‘I’m going to fucking hammer him.’
-Charlie Rodgers on his brother Bill