Thursday, December 20, 2007

Kickin' it old school

8:35 AM - 12 miles, 1:22:00 - Worcester State.
New loop down Hope Ave, past the cemeteries, into Webster Square, across to Mill Street, around Worcester State and back. 7:18 first mile, 6:17 for the last one. Felt pretty good.

Today marked my longest run in the past few weeks and other than slogging through two inches of fresh slush it actually wasn't all that bad. This winter thing is getting real old, real fast but since it's not going anywhere anytime soon I'll just shut up, deal with it and keep my complaining to a minimum. Casey's blowing out the belt on his treadmill, Jeff's sneaking in miles on the job, Terry and Voce are spending their Sunday mornings running in a parking garage, Nate's throwing down 17.6K progression runs at 5:30 average on sloppy roads and I have no idea what Ryan's been up to since he doesn't update his blog anymore but I'm almost positive he's been clicking off sub-6 minute miles on Raytheon's treadmill during his lunch hour.

Bottom line is I've got no excuses. None of the aforementioned fellas make excuses, old-school Mario never made any, and there's no reason for the present-day version to be doing so, either. If I want to bust out at Boston I've got to suck it up and get going, shitty road conditions and woeful weather be damned.

Quote of the Day

"People want to be good -- right now. They think that a couple months of training should put them in great shape. But it doesn't happen overnight -- you're changing tissue: heart, circulatory system and muscle cell tissue. Katie McGregor's running isn't about what she did this year, it's about what she did last year, what she did the last four years. The most important thing in athletic improvement is consistency."
- Dennis Barker, coach of Team USA Minnesota

4 comments:

mark said...

Old School Mario was all about:
- doubling on long run days
- pissing matches with A-Ten at West Hill
- glass of milk every night at dinner
- reading Nietzsche (that's what philosophy majors do, right?)
- Supernova Classics
- Stonehill grounds crew (risk: breaking back while lifting heavy objects)

New School Mario is all about:
- shopping for lighting fixtures
- Thursday night group runs from PR Running
- Mocha Latte at Tatnuck Books
- reading Runner's World
- NB 767
- Cushy Running Store job (risk: breaking nail while lifting Brooks Adrenaline)

All kidding aside, I'm looking forward going back to our WHTC days next week. I think we could easily recreate at least one old school tradition: Mario and A-Ten pissing match with me hanging on for dear life!

See you in a couple of days!

Mario said...

For the record, I don't drink lattes or read Runner's World. Regular coffee and Running Times is more my style, and believe me, that grounds crew job was a lot cushier than my current one.

Anonymous said...

i am always up for a pissing match - when not broken...

a-tizzle

Sean said...

I love the link to the old article, I had totally forgot about that. You must have written me a script or something, I would never say nice things like that on purpose.