Sunday, September 29, 2013

I Live in Iowa: Week 125

This was a rather fulfilling week. Busy, not a whole lot of time to sit around, but that's probably a good thing.

Work was a little busier than usual. Not exactly for my forestry machines, but one of the other product groups is a little behind schedule so overtime was approved for people to work on their projects. I took the opportunity to make more money, which means staying a little later at work and coming in on the weekend. Working 50-60 hours a week is a lot harder now than it was in college for several reasons, not having a laptop I have to commute 15 minutes to and from work and thus can't really put in less than two hours of work at a time, on the weekends there is hardly anyone in the office, which makes it a little harder to stay there for a long time, finally, without the everyday atmosphere of homework it is far harder to do "homework". Without a laptop I couldn't do much "homework" anyway, but the point is, in college I  often broke up my work day into a number of smaller blocks. Four hours in the morning, lunch, three hours in the afternoon, running and supper, two to four hours in the evening. That was often broken up with classes as well. Part of what made that possible was living so close to my "work". A 15 minute drive is very short by average commute standards, I know, but a 10 minute walk is a world of difference closer.

I bring all this up because I think about productivity and how a small group of people can accomplish something easier (and cheaper) than a larger group. The academic/university/start-up model seems to be the best choice.

Running went well, the highlight was running a 26:30 8k, which is an open 8k PR. My GPS even measured the course as a little long, although part of that is due to me running the outsides of curves in order to pass people. My goal was to go out and run 3:15 kilometers, and according to my GPS I did. However, that meant that I spent 90% of the race passing people who had started faster than myself. The last 3/4 mile the lactic acid built up and the last 400 meters I was wallowing in the heavy feeling of anaerobic torture. Considering I have not really done any anaerobic work, and why would you for a marathon, that is exactly how I had hoped the race would play out.

I ran a total of 92 miles, about 85 of them slower than 6:30 pace trying to recover from my 20 miler last week. I am in the fortunate position of being healthy and having 14 days until the Chicago Marathon and no workouts planned for this coming week. I left it open because the hardest part of the quality needs to be done by now and in case I had to push anything back a week or two. So I think I will try to get in one more medium long specific pace workout early this week while I still have time to recover from it. This whole cycle has been a blessing from God! I don't know what will happen in Chicago, maybe I'll blow the opportunity and not PR, but I guarantee when I cross the finish line, there will not be anything more I could have done to do my best.

Coaching was a mixed bag. This past week was one of our fastest courses, and only a few people set personal records. The hope is that from one year to the next every runner improves. When a runner improves by three seconds over a 29 minute race during an entire year, something is not right.

That is my life. I spent over nine hours three times this week. This is the time when I have to really take care to rest up for the marathon.

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