Parked at the canal, roads down to West Hill, one loop and back. Added on with a little out-and-back toward Plummer's Landing and stopped at the intersection of Upton Road and Pudding Street 45 minutes in for 5 x 10-second hill charges. Threw in 5 x 20-second strides over the last mile as well, just to stretch the legs out a bit.
Day off from work today, but a busy one nonetheless. It's funny, my days off aren't ever really "off", but rather days where I try and get all the other crap done that I manage to neglect during my irregular work week. Today started with a doctor's appointment for my aching right eye, which it turns out is infected. Looks like I'll be wearing my glasses for a few days till this sucker clears up, literally. From there, I headed home to update the local Running Calendar, which will run alongside my twice-monthly running column in this Sunday's paper. The column itself still needed some work, but I deemed completing my own run more important than completing the column, so I took off to West Hill to get some mileage in on soft ground. After getting home in the early hours of the afternoon, I showered, then sat down and had some lunch before meeting with a representative from Gallo Builders to pick a new tile for the foyer in my new pad because the first color I chose had recently been discontinued. For the curious amongst my loyal crowd, I went with "rocca grey" which replaced the "stone grey" I originally had my sights set on. I'm still wondering why this substitution couldn't be taken care of over the phone, but apparently, me initialing the change was a key part of the equation. Damn bureaucracy.
Anyway, after taking care of the trivial tile matter, I went to pick up my prescription from the pharmacy, which took close to 20 minutes. Mind you I dropped the script off on my way home from the appointment this morning, and never mind the fact that the damn thing was nothing more than a tiny bottle of eye drops. Yes, eye drops!
Moving on. Eye drops in hand and eventually in my eye, I got home, had some fish for dinner with the rents and got back to work on my column. The goal was to finish the thing by 6 so I could head out to Stonehill for the football home-opener at W.B. Mason Stadium, but it wasn't meant to be. 2-1/2 hours and almost 20 inches of type later, I put the finishing touches on a piece highlighting the importance of making yourself visible while running outside during the fall and winter months. I even managed to work a reference to Clark Griswold in there. Make sure to check it out here on Sunday.
Speaking of Sunday, I'll be racing in this inaugural event hosted by the one and only Paul Collyer. After talking things over with Kevin earlier this week, I'll be using the race as part of a tempo/threshold workout consisting of 2 x 5K. The plan will be to navigate the course at 10:35 AM all by my lonesome at what will hopefully be a leisurely aerobic pace of 5:20-5:30 a mile, then at 11 AM try and lead 400-500 other runners on an even faster 3.1-mile tour of Worcester's thriving Canal District. The goal is to get down to 5:10-15 pace or thereabouts the second time around. Yes, I realize that's not much of a drop in pace, but there's a very fine line between my aerobic and anaerobic capacities right now. A few more weeks of steady mileage mixed with some well-placed hill workouts, tempo runs and fartleks should help to widen that gap a bit.
And few hours of sleep right now will help ensure that I'm well-rested for my efforts on Sunday morning. I'm feeling pretty good about the 7-2 lead the Sox are holding over the Yanks right now in the seventh, so I don't mind shutting this one off early. Let's just hope I don't wake up tomorrow morning eating those words.
Quote of the Day
This is the point where it gets interesting, you sort of ride the line just below being injured (hopefully), and I personally am lucky if I have two runs a week where I actually enjoy myself. This is what it takes to compete in the trials though, and most of the guys are willing to do it, I just hope we can walk in ten years."
- Brian Sell on going 'ballz deep'
1 comment:
Rocca grey huh? I guess I can handle that... I'll certainly be taking note of that at this house warming party that you keep talking about.
Good quote by Sell too... I think we've both been there.
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