Off day

You'd think that with two days off from work I'd have plenty of time to fill this space with witty commentary and plenty of pictures, but au contraire, mon fraire. Such is not the case.

A day off for me is usually anything but, especially when I've got a never ending laundry list of - pardon my French - shit, that just needs to get cleaned up. Hell, why do you think I escaped to Oregon for four days?

The answer: It's nearly impossible to keep a dentist appointment, get your eyes checked, go grocery shopping, respond to e-mails, renew your license, paint the front door, cut the grass, clean your car, get your oil changed, tidy up your living area and save the world from 3,000 miles away.

OK, so those aren't the only reasons I headed west for a few days, but it was enough of an excuse to warrant waiting until after I got home to check stuff off the aforementioned list. Now that I'm back in the Bay State, however, it's back to reality, as they say.

Ah, but I digress. Before I go clean out a couple toilet bowls, here's the Cliff's Notes version of what I've been up to with my running since that little marathon I did a few weeks back.

First week post-Boston: 3 days "off off", followed by a few token 30-minute jogs and the establishment of a consistent routine of staying up late, drinking beer with buds and eating copious amounts of ice cream on an almost nightly basis.

Week 2: 48.5 miles of running, but no doubles, no run over an hour and not a mile south of 7-minute pace. I did do strides three times, however, and started to get my ass to bed before midnight again. Beer consumption dropped off quite a bit but I did continue to feed my sweet tooth pretty generously.

Week the 3rd: 68.4 miles of running, which far exceeded the never-to-be-disputed 15% increase proclaimed as gospel by the sacred text of the sport, Runner's World. No real long run to speak of, but I did double once and ran on trails every day in Oregon from Wednesday through Saturday. I kept up with doing strides, but decided to put off any sort of structured workout another week. Chomping at the bit, though.

Semana Numero Quatro: So far I'm at 24.5 miles of running for two days, including a short double yesterday. I did my first longer run, that being 93 minutes, on Sunday after work and closed that one with the last 15 minutes under 6-minute pace. The rest of the week looks like this...track workout tonight, recovery run tomorrow, longerish run with strides on Thursday, tempo run and short hills Friday and a recovery run on Saturday. Overall mileage will probably end up somewhere in the low 70's.

While in Oregon I had the chance to sit down with Kevin and map out a plan for the rest of the year. In a nutshell, the next 12 weeks will be devoted to 10K-type training, culminating with the Beach to Beacon 10K in early August. I've got a handful of other races on the schedule before that, but B2B is where I'd really like to rip a good one. After the 10K I'll take a week of active recovery and then it's full steam ahead to the Bay State Marathon in mid-October.

Why Bay State? It's close, it's flat and it's on the Grand Prix this year so it should (read: I hope) draw a solid local crowd. Without any hiccups, I believe I can get myself in sub-2:25 shape and contend for the win.

After the 26.2 in Lowell everything is still pretty much up in the air, but if I can get my legs back under me in time to pull off an abbreviated cross season I may do just that. If not, I'll take a little bit of a break and then get an early start on building a base for the 2009 track season. Yep, you read that right.

That's all I got for now. Pretty productive entry I'd say, minus the pictures. I do have a handful of shots from Hayward Field of Joanie, Catherine, Jeff and the star of the show, Barack Obama, but those JPEGs are still taking up temporary residency on my camera's memory card. Some day they'll move into the My Pictures folder on my laptop and eventually end up on this site, but today is not that day. I've still gotta clean a toilet bowl or two before heading to the track tonight, so the pictures will have to wait until later in the week to make an appearance.

Hey, it's my day off. Give me a break.