As I write this, I am sitting in the Airport waiting to board my flight to Minneapolis, which will then connect to my flight to London. While this trip will present plenty of challenges, this is a running blog, so one of the big challenges I will be facing is how marathon training will hold up to the next ten days, five flights, two countries, and all the work stress and travel stress that is inevitably going to play havoc with my usually schedule-driven and routine-based existence.

Today before I left for the airport I got in a quick four miles. Monday is not usually a running day, but a couple of factors come in to play here. Because I am flying out today, I didn’t go to work, which meant no gym, so no strength training. But more of a factor than that was that it just seemed to be the best way to shift the schedule to accommodate the trip. Last week was a cutback week, and so my weekend run was going to be only seven miles, and since it wasn’t so long that it needed an extra day of rest, I decided to move it to Saturday instead of Sunday. This worked out well, since Sunday was Easter, and Anna, the kids, and I were all in Rockford celebrating with my family. This meant that Sunday was a rest day (funny how that works) and today made sense to get in the short easy four that was scheduled for tomorrow. Of course tomorrow is going to be coming a lot sooner for me than it normally would, since I am going to be flying in to the future, so to speak. So tomorrow will be jet-lag day, and it made sense to get my run in now rather than try to do it tomorrow, probably in a hotel gym, while exhausted from eight or nine hours in a cramped coach seat. This also served to allow tomorrow to be a rest day, so I could do my speed work Wednesday, hopefully after a decent night’s sleep, and then get in two more off days before I attempt a long run, as usual, since I planned to do this week’s sixteen-miler on Saturday again, since I fly to Amsterdam on Sunday. I will probably end up cutting cross-training entirely, since time will be a factor, as well as energy, and just the ability to do my usual strength-training routine in a hotel gym is suspect.

So about today’s run—not much to tell, did a two-out-two-back little jaunt around the neighborhood. Weather was nice, on the warm side—probably mid-sixties—and not nearly as much wind as there had been. My left knee had been bothering me a little bit earlier in the day; nothing major, just a little tweaky—but it felt fine on the run. It’s in the books, and I feel fine. I still have some adjusting to do with the warm weather; we’ll see how European weather treats me.

On Saturday, I did my last seven-miler of the three I had on the schedule for my cutback week last week. Since I was at my sister’s house, I ran a course I had never run before, although I had biked it many years ago, so I kind of knew what to expect. It was on a bike path along the Rock River, so it was a pretty nice run, if a little windy. The last mile was mostly uphill, also, so that was challenging, although not overly so. I have been running all of them easy, so nothing overwhelming; my times on each got a bit faster, probably as I get used to the weather and recover from that twenty miler so long ago.

April fool’s, and the trick that I got played on me today was Mother Nature springing (you see what I did there) a twenty-degree jump up the thermometer. When I checked the weather widget before lunch today, it told me 80 degrees, and it was still going up then.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand that almost everybody was in love with the weather today. I, however, had seven miles to run on legs (and lungs) that were definitely used to temperatures below sixty. There was a wind again today, but instead of being an obstacle, like on Tuesday, it was actually welcome when I felt it; it was a nice cooling factor, and not nearly as strong as last time.

I did the same course again today, just in the opposite direction. There were a ton of people out on the trails today, especially for 1:00 on a weekday. Obviously the weather had to do with that. I felt like a damp rag for most of the run; my legs were just having that not-so-fresh feeling. I was surprised, however, to find that I finished a little faster than Tuesday; I really thought the heat (and maybe having run 34 miles in the last five days) was going to lead to a much slower time. I attribute the difference to the lighter winds.

I shudder to think what August is going to be like if this is the beginning of April. Guess it’s about time to change the header picture, huh?

Speaking of looking to the future, this is the start of what may be a crucial couple of weeks in my marathon training. This weekend, we’ll be at my sister’s, which I’m not too concerned about, since I only have to get in seven miles, but in an unfamiliar location. But then the locations become much less familiar. I fly out for London on Monday, and will hopefully have three training runs while I am there, including a sixteen-miler that if it goes well, could be amazing, and if it goes poorly (or not at all) could be disastrous. Then I fly to Holland for two days the following week, including one run that should be easy, and home on that Wednesday. Once I’m home, I’ve got one night to get over jet lag to do a speed run and then my second twenty that weekend. Sigh. If I can make it through this gauntlet with my training intact, the marathon will be a piece of cake. I’ve already resigned myself to the fact that I am willing to lose cross-training workouts as long as I get the runs in, but usually on these trips I’m working almost all day. So making time for running will have to be a concerted effort. Fortunately my colleagues on this trip I anticipate being sympathetic to the cause.

One last run before March wraps up to cap off my record mileage month and put me over the century mark—including today’s seven miles, I am at 104 for the month. And I only have progressively longer runs on the schedule to look forward to in April, so it could become the new record holder right away. From an official mileage-logging perspective, my weeks start on Monday, but if you consider it from a 7 consecutive days perspective, I’ve done 33 miles in the past seven days, which is probably my longest 7-day stretch with the exception of marathon week last year, which only beats it out because of that .2 on the end.

I was thinking for a while that I was going to get a nice easy two-miler today like I do most Tuesdays, but the good news/bad news is that this week is a cutback week, meaning that I don’t have a crazy long run to look forward to on Sunday (actually likely Monday or Saturday since Sunday is Easter) but in trade I get three seven-milers this week. Easy paced ones, though. And that’s OK. I still went out there today with a smile on my face. I feel pretty good despite how I felt finishing twenty miles just two days ago; definitely better than I did last year after my first twenty.

Part of the reason I was looking forward to today’s seven was that I mapped out a new route for it. It covers ground that I have done before, but a couple miles or m ore of it I have only done once or twice. In fact, it included a stretch of trail that the last and only time I ran it was on my now infamous (to me) jinxed nine-miler—the first and last time I have run nine miles, and the reason I developed a superstition about it. Among the many things that went wrong that day was I ran this stretch of trail, which, at that time did not have bridges over its three creek crossings (nor was I aware until I arrived at them it did not have bridges), forcing me to run through the creek and do the next six miles or so in wet shoes. I had no reason to expect that they would be bridgeless, as it is the same trail I ran on all the time, and in the area I had run, the two creek crossings had bridges. Well, today, I did some research and found that last year when they paved the trail part of the project was to put up three new bridges. I hadn’t gotten visual confirmation, but I figured I had no reason to doubt it, since the paving part had obviously been completed. And in a worst case scenario, I was on an easy run anyway, so I could just stop and walk across the stepping stones (something I was not willing to do last time).

Well, I got there, and sure enough, I got to run over three lovely wooden bridges, as well as admire the natural beauty of the woods that the creek runs through. So that was pleasant. The other new stretch wasn’t as exciting, being just a fairly straight bit of path that runs between some ball fields and the airport grounds, although I did get to see a private jet taking off.

The funny thing about today’s run was that I was so busy planning the route, I didn’t even consider the weather. I only packed a short-sleeve tech shirt and a pair of shorts, never even considering I would want anything else, and at the last minute it occurred to me I’d better check the weather report so I knew what I was getting in to. Having not been outside since the morning commute (which was a bit chilly, but not bad) and only looked outside a few times (sunny, but kind of cool-looking, if you know what I mean) I took a quick glance at the weather widget before heading out, and when I saw it said 56 degrees, I thought “no problem!” The thing I failed to notice until I was out there, however was that it also said “winds gusting to 29 MPH”.

Fortunately, I was back in the woods for most of the time, where it wasn’t a factor. But the last mile or so was in open fields with no wind breaks anywhere, and headed directly in to the teeth of the wind. It was a south wind, so it wasn’t cold; the temperature was just fine. But I was leaning in to it pretty hard to try to make headway against it. When I finished, I felt good, though. Strong.

Yesterday was the culmination of week seven of the marathon training plan, and my first of three scheduled twenty-mile runs. Twenty miles is traditionally (and it holds true in my case as well) the longest mileage run in the marathon training plan, but I have never done one this early in the schedule. Hopefully adding one in at this point will help me improve on last year’s time, as I am getting more mileage in overall, with three twenty-milers instead of just two, and more of the high-mileage runs earlier in the plan.

Looking back, last week’s mileage—28 miles—was my most mileage for a week since the final week of training before taper for last year’s marathon. The run yesterday alone was my longest run since the marathon, and before that, my twenty-miler in the last week of training before the taper. In fact, my run yesterday was longer by itself than the full week’s mileage in half of the weeks of the past year. On top of that, with yesterday’s run, I have officially put in more mileage in the month of March than any month, ever. And that includes all of my training for last year’s marathon. And I still have a run tomorrow to put on top of that. If it goes as planned, I will easily break one hundred miles in a month for the first time.

So, in light of all these miles, how am I feeling? Not bad, truth be told. I was a little sore today, but nothing major. I’m going up and down stairs without issue, which was more than I could say after my twenty-milers last year. I’m all-around feeling fairly strong and healthy and confident, knock wood. I’m not feeling especially fast, but that I think will come around. I need to be patient and remember that even though I could probably run the marathon in two weeks, I actually still have two months of training left to go.

The run yesterday turned out fine. That’s easy for me to say now, because, I’ll admit, by the end of it, I was hurting. I mean, that’s to be expected; running twenty miles is hard. But in retrospect I feel positive about it. I wasn’t intimidated by it when I was starting out; I didn’t feel like I was going to break any records, but I felt capable. The first third or so I didn’t have any problems, and I was just putting in the time and covering ground. By the time I to the halfway point however, I was having an issue. A specific issue that was really starting to throw me off. And that issue was that I really had to pee.

I’ve had to pee on runs before, but usually they aren’t this long. And usually, even if I feel the urge, I can hang on until I know I’m going to come to a public restroom or porta-potty, or even the finish. But this one I knew that I wasn’t going to definitely come across anything like that for seven or eight miles. This was going to be a problem. When I got to the midway point I considered that I should take some salt, or eat something, but I didn’t feel like it because my bladder was full and was encompassing my entire focus. Now, you may be saying, “just find a bush and go.” Normally, I would agree with you. But this was a beautiful spring day, and I was on bike paths, and every biker in the city had just gotten their bikes out of storage and was going for a ride. There was zero chance that I was going to be able to do that without being seen. It’s not that I have a problem with someone potentially taking a peek at me, it’s more that I don’t want them to think I’m some transient jerk or perv who just pees in public all the time. If I had a discreet, sanitary, and (ahem) legal option, I would take it, no problem. But I didn’t. so when I finally found a place that along the path but not on it, in a densely vegetated but easily accessible area that provided sufficient cover, I took it. And I felt much better.

After I got that out of the way, I was back on course, but both my mental plans and my nutritional plans were just thrown off. I proceeded to take some salt, and have some food (fruit leather this time) but it kind of felt like it was coming late. Whether or not it actually was is debatable, but because it felt that way, it affected me like it was. I started to lose a little confidence and my mind started to focus on my fatigue. I told myself that my legs were still fine, and it was just my mind that was getting fatigued, and that I needed work through it in my head and my legs would take care of themselves.

After about three-quarters through, I hit my last refueling checkpoint and got a banana that I had placed in advance. That helps both mentally and physically, and although I wasn’t exactly hungry, the banana tasted good once I was eating it. One of the things that I was a bit concerned about planning this run was that I was finishing up on a long stretch that I finish on a lot, so I know it well and it is not the most entertaining stretch of road; a lot of straight, flat, and not much to look at. Those last few miles on runs like these are almost all mental because it’s more a matter of convincing your body to keep going when everything is telling you to stop, than it is actually having the physical strength to do it. By the last mile, pretty much everything hurt at least a little. But I kept the mantras going in my head: “Twenty miles. You are doing it. Right now. It is not just a number, it is something you are doing, at this moment. You are accomplishing it.” And then when all else fails, there is the one universal runner’s mantra: “finish line”.

And I finished. One down, two to go.

It would have been a better day for a run, however, if it wasn’t for the WIND! Coming off a long winter, it’s always a little silly to whine about the weather when it’s sunny and above freezing. But today, starting out, it was a bit cold. 41 degrees is what the internet told me, and that before a stiff wind coming from the north.

Six miles tempo today. I have gotten to the point where I am no longer that intimidated by my Thursday speedwork, and it’s just something I do—not that I hate it, or love it. As with all runs, I usually feel good when it’s done. One mile warm up, four hard, one cool down. The parts into the wind were rough, the parts with the wind, rather pleasant. Although it’s not completely honest to say the hard running parts are excessively pleasant, but once I was warmed up, I was feeling decent. I was convinced early on that I wasn’t going to turn in a very good time, between fighting the wind, and just not being very fast right now, but when I finished, I was pleasantly surprised—frankly, shocked—at my time. I was a good half minute per mile average faster than I was expecting. Which is good, since I need a few of those confidence boosting times about now; I haven’t been posting the best times lately. That will likely change once I start spring league ultimate, which I just signed up for recently, since ultimate is effectively speedwork.

So I was pretty happy with the run, and I only had to dodge two cars (he said sarcastically). Truthfully, I only really dodged one; the other just was too close for comfort. The first one was an older lady driving up to the exit of the Costco parking lot, where the bike path crossed it. That’s not a sidewalk, mind you, and actual two-lane bike path. I approached it and saw the car nearing the exit, and I thought, well, of course she’s going to stop. There’s a stop line clearly marked there, before the path, and I obviously have the right of way here, so I just continued on. This was naïve of me, of course; she rolled right on past the stop line and into the path, as I dodged to avoid her front end. I don’t think even then she was stopping for me, I think she was just stopping to wait for traffic so she could turn out on to the street. There were no obstacles that would have prevented her from seeing me, she just didn’t look. Admittedly I should have known better than to trust a motorist to see me and stop. But on the bright side, it wasn’t really a dangerous situation. She wasn’t going fast and I wasn’t close to getting hurt. In the worst case, if she hadn’t stopped at all, I would have just sat down on her hood. Then she would have seen me.

In other news, I was informed today that now the Sunday visit to Anna’s family (that I mentioned last time) is cancelled, and I’m back to needing to plan for a 20-miler here in town. Which is fine I guess, because it solves some problems, while probably causing some others (not run-related, necessarily). But we’ll see how that goes.

A great day for a run, actually; after this weekend’s cold snap, temps were back up in to the fifties and the sun was out. I did my Tuesday two-mile easy run, and enjoyed it the whole way. No interesting stories to tell, although afterward, when I was stretching in the gym, my friend/co-worker Nick was picking my brain about my run today and my running in general, because he and another co-worker had just made plans to start running outside together since it is nice out. I’ve been having more and more conversations with co-workers about running lately; probably because it is on people’s minds now that it is getting nice enough to make people want to get outside and do stuff after being inside all winter. Also, I am still actively pursuing getting people signed up for my work Crazylegs team, so I’ve been putting the bug in people’s collective ear, so to speak. Anyway, I told him I would share some courses I have laid out around work.

I of course know all my usual courses like the back of my hand now, but I was planning to map them for him to see, and it got me thinking (and grumpy) about the poor quality of maps available for that purpose around my office. Don’t get me wrong, Google Maps is an amazing thing, and it gets better all the time. But I have a love-hate relationship with it. Because the satellite images they use never get updated. And the bike trails, which I regularly run on, get updated all the time. As an example, the area by my work has a nice network of bike paths that have all been under constant improvement for the past several years. But the satellite image on Google in that area doesn’t even show the completed building that I work in. that building was under construction when I was hired, and I have been employed there for over six years now. The building has since even been expanded. But according to Google’s satellite images, it’s still just a dirt construction site. Needless to say, many of the paths don’t show up there at all. There was a big to-do in the biking community recently when everyone got excited that they added biking directions. Which, I admit, is a great thing to have. But the directions are only as good as the information they have, and they don’t have great information.

There are plenty of sources out there for mapping and measuring runs, and I have at least tried most of them. But all of them use Google’s map API for the interface. Understandable; it’s the de facto industry standard at this point. But while that means they get all the power and flexibility of Google Maps, they also get all the flaws and shortcomings. Which, I my case, puts me out of luck. This had, for a long time, driven me to use Microsoft’s Live maps (since rebranded Bing maps to go along with their re-branded search engine). It’s got a lot of things about it I dislike—not the least of which is that it’s from Microsoft—but it does have the most up-to-date imaging I have found. Still not all the paths are there, but more of them are, and it has the handy bird’s eye view feature, which helps not only because the images are more recent still, but to get some perspective on terrain and other views when paths are hidden in trees or some such.
However, one site—my favorite, in fact—gives some other options besides just the standard Google images—and one of them is the not great, but very high potential OpenStreetMap. It also knew nothing of my bike paths, but it is a wiki-map, so I promptly set up an account, and began entering them. A little learning curve to get to the point where I could add them, but as of now, at least part of the trails that I run on and which do not show up on any other mapping tool, are there.

All this and I haven’t even mentioned my eighteen-miler last Saturday. As I mentioned before, I moved the long run to Saturday last week to accommodate Anna’s plans. I was pretty nervous about it not only because of the reconfiguration of the schedule (which necessitated a drop of my usual Friday workout to get a rest day in before) but because of all the other factors—bad weather predicted; difficulty with fueling and hydrating, etc. As it turns out, none of that ended up being a significant problem. The run itself went surprisingly well. The forecast was for temps in the thirties, and snow/rain—up to several inches. What actually transpired was that Friday night and overnight in to Saturday morning, there was a light snow—maybe a couple inches, tops—fell, but when I got up, I looked out to see (much to my pleasure) that while the grassy areas had some light snow cover, all the streets, sidewalks, driveways, etc. were completely clear. There was enough retained heat in them to keep any snow from sticking. And this meant that all the trails would be clear, too.

The temperatures were moderately chilly, starting from the high twenties in the morning, but steadily rising throughout the day. By the time I was getting ready to go out, the clouds were starting to part and the sun was coming out, warming things up more. There was, however, a bit of a wind. I wore just shorts, but a long sleeve shirt and my windbreaker (which I had to bring out of a premature retirement) and gloves and a headband for my ears. The route I was taking was a vastly different one from any of my other usual routes, as it goes far out on to a regional bike trail that runs through a fairly rural and remote area south of town for a good part of it, and I had only run it once before (for last year’s eighteen –miler during marathon training). As such, I wanted to be extra prepared. I took my phone with me, as I almost never do; partly I took it because I was on call for work, and knew I would be getting a test page in the middle somewhere, but also because I was going to be away from any nearby source of assistance if I ran in to trouble. I took my Gatorade bottle, of course, but also a granola bar, two GU packets, and a salt packet. I ate a salt packet before I left, and picked up a bottle of water and a banana which I stashed about five miles or so from the finish. And finally, I brought a pair of plastic gloves (the kind Anna and I use to dye hair) just in case it got wet out there. It didn’t look like rain anymore, but I wasn’t taking any chances.

As I headed out, the first part of my route was mostly downwind and through a sheltered area, so after a while, I even got a little warm, and took off my gloves. I felt great and was just cruising along with no trouble. By the time I got five or six miles in, I was thinking this was going to be no problem at all. Part of that was the wind at my back, and the sun shining down on me; part of it was seeing other people out there running as well; but mostly I think it was the novelty of a course that I haven’t run a hundred times already. When I got somewhere around the halfway point, I hadn’t drunk much Gatorade, but I wasn’t really thirsty, and I wasn’t really hungry either, but I ate the granola bar anyway, because I figured I should. I normally would have taken the salt packet at that point too, but I just felt like I didn’t want or need it, so I didn’t have it. I know the idea of eating a packet of straight salt probably makes most people think you would never want it, but usually it goes down pretty well after you’ve been sweating for an hour and a half already. This time, though, I just felt fine.

Of course, that point is also where the trail transitions from mostly urban to mostly rural. That meant a few things—that the trees and building breaking the wind were gone; that I was going back into the wind, and that the small, rolling hills I was on turned in to long, slow inclines and declines. Those, combined with the simple fatigue of having run so far already, meant that things got more challenging. Gone were the other runners and bikers. It was just me, the thoughts in my head, and the point on the horizon I was headed towards. It wasn’t horrible. I remembered my time out there last year, and it was also on one of the last cold days before spring, with wind whipping and at that time even a bit of snow in the air. I think this time was a little better, though, as the sun was still out, warming things, and at this point one could even tell that the snow cover was noticeably fading to the point where as I approached the finish much of the areas that had been snowy in the morning were now clear. I did get so I enjoyed every downhill stretch and every grove of trees that gave respite from the wind.

My focus during this stretch (aside from singing TV theme songs in my head) was on getting to the point at which I had stashed my water and banana. Like I said, I didn’t know this course that well, so while I had vague memories of how it went, I didn’t know every twist and turn like I do on most runs. So I kept looking to the east hoping to see the spot appear. The funny thing is, when I finally got there, I just didn’t feel hungry or thirsty at all. I still had plenty of Gatorade, and while I didn’t have an upset stomach, exactly, I just didn’t feel like eating. So I just left them there and went right on past. I had a few sips of Gatorade every now and then, but I still had some left when I finished. Not sure why. Maybe I’m getting more efficient (ha ha) or maybe I just ate a lot more than I usually do before I started. Another probably significant factor is that before I left, I took two tums to avoid acid stomach, (which is something I discovered on long runs last year in training) which I suspect slowed down digestion enough to stretch what I had in my stomach over the course of the eighteen miles. The last few were tiring, but that’s to be expected. When I finished I felt strong, if fatigued.

So now I’ve got the first of three scheduled twenty-milers coming up this weekend. By now I’m gaining a lot of confidence in my ability to do the mileage, but again life’s hurdles are going to be bigger than the simple act of running for distance. Anna spent Sunday at her sister’s, and after returning, asked if it would be okay for us to spend this coming weekend with her family celebrating Easter early. Again, normally, I would find this to be a good solution to the two families/one holiday problem, but throw in a little twenty-mile run, and things get a bit complicated. The good news is I already did a twenty mile run last year when we were visiting there (then it was I believe the week after Easter that we did the off-Easter Easter) so I already have a course laid out. The bad news is that I don’t really want people to think I’m ditching the party to spend several hours on the trail. That, and the fact that while a baked ham and mashed potatoes might make a good recovery meal (sodium and protein, carbs), it probably makes a very poor pre-run meal. Also, my route is a very simple out-and-back, in an area I am not really familiar with, which doesn’t lend itself to placing fueling stops along the way. So it might mean carrying a banana ten miles or so. On the other hand, I bought a bunch of fruit leather strips to try, since they are light, fairly digestible, palatable, not bulky, and reasonably calorie-dense. We’ll see how it goes.

P.S. – Hawkeyes’ 23rd overall and third consecutive NCAA Wrestling Championship!

Ah, Thursday speedwork. You never make it easy for me. As if seven miles of intervals wasn’t tough enough, life had to conspire to make it even harder.

But to tell this story, we have to go back to last night. As I mentioned in my last post, my plan was to get up early and do my Thursday run in the morning before work. As such, I was hoping to get to bed a little early. Last night started out a little rough, with Henry giving us all we could handle and not wanting to cooperate with anything. When we finally had him put to bed, I needed to go to the store to get a few groceries. A few days prior, Anna had gone bought a chest freezer at the grocery store for $200, and it came with $200 in coupons for free groceries of various types. Most of them expire at the end of the month, so I took them all with me with the intention of redeeming them.

I left shortly after 8:00. As I hunted up and down the aisles for all the things that I had coupons for, it soon became apparent that I was not going to be leaving any time soon. By the time I had rounded up everything I could find, in addition to all my regular groceries, I had an overflowing cart and had been there two hours. Then I had to check out. Which meant that they had to match up each coupon with each item. It actually went quite well. I just had them tell me what coupon came next and dug out that item. They weren’t very busy at that time of night.

By the time I got home, it was after 10:00. I then had to unload everything from the car, and when I got it all inside, I discovered that Anna had already gone to bed. Which meant I got to put it all away, too. So when all was said and done, I didn’t get to bed early at all; in fact, probably later than I would have before. But I set the alarm for 6:00 nonetheless.

When the alarm went off, I thought a little about getting up. But it was so peaceful, and the kids were quiet, and I just had a feeling that nobody was going to wake up for a while. And I decided that I could get up, but that sleep is just as important a part of training as putting in miles, and I could squeeze in my run during work sometime. So I slept.

It seemed a little lazy at the time, but may have been the best decision I made all day. It did put me a little behind at work, but no big deal there. The morning went fine, but then, in the afternoon, when I was just considering going out for my run, chaos erupted. People were coming to me and telling me that nobody could access any files, and that computers were locking up across the company. Now, in a sense, this is not my problem. But when people come to you with a disaster, you do what you can to help solve it. So I spent the next hour or two working on that until it came out that everything was resolved. I was sure at first it was the network getting hammered with NCAA tournament watching, but it turned out that was not the case at all.

What was the case was that now it was almost three in the afternoon, I hadn’t had any lunch yet, and I still had seven miles of intervals I had to run. I knew I couldn’t run after eating, so I went and got changed and headed outside. The weather was really quite nice, but I could already feel the hole gnawing at my gut. The intervals were laid out as 1.5 warmup, one hard, half a mile recovery, another one hard, another half recovery, a third hard and then 1.5 easy cooldown. Let me tell you: it hurt. After the first I could already tell I was not nearly as hydrated or fueled as I should have been. But I gutted it out and got it done. By the time I got back to the office, and showered, it was after four. I knew that I was just going home and have dinner before long, so I mostly just skipped lunch and only had an apple and re-hydrated.

In better news, the Hawkeye wrestlers lead the NCAA tournament by a good margin and have more wrestlers still alive in the championship brackets than anyone else. That is one thing that helped me gut out today’s run, knowing that, like them, these are the kinds of things you have to do sometimes to break through the wall.

Yesterday was just an easy run day, two miles—a mile out, and a mile back, nothing much to report. The weather was nice, and except for the fact that I almost stopped an eighth of a mile too soon, because I was on auto-pilot mentally, and stopped for a second at the point where many of my courses finish (but not the one I was running at the time), it was a pretty by-the-book run.

You’ll have to excuse me for losing focus, since my mind is inevitably wandering to the two runs coming up this week: tomorrow, seven miles of intervals, and this weekend, eighteen. The seven miler by itself will be tough, but more so because I can’t realistically get in a run of that distance on a lunch break, so I’m probably going to have to get up early and do it in the morning before work. The getting up part will probably be worse than the actually running seven miles part. At least that’s how it is in my mind right now.

And then the big eighteen-miler this weekend. I say “this weekend” rather than “Sunday” because a proposal has been floated for me to switch to Saturday this week so that Sunday Anna can spend some time at her sister’s. In theory, I have no problem with this, but in practice, this weekend I’m running eighteen miles. If this were any old ten- or twelve- mile weekend when I wasn’t training for anything specifically, it would be no big deal. But this is going to be the latest in a series of runs that is going to (indeed, was designed to) push my limits. So adding extra wrinkles isn’t ideal. Speaking of things not being ideal, to add to the fun, the forecast for this weekend (after a couple weeks of temperatures in the fifties and even sixties, and the melting of all but the biggest piles of snow) is for temperatures in the thirties and snow and rain. Running in a warm-ish snow, where it falls but doesn’t stick, might not be bad. Running in a cold rain could be nightmarish.

In other, not-running-related news, I wrote a guest post for a friend’s parenting blog that was posted yesterday at http://www.mamasxinitiative.blogspot.com/, so go check that out. There’s a picture of Henry running his first-ever race there. And hello to anyone who found their way here via that post; thanks for stopping by.

Happy Daylight Saving Time. The loss of an hour doesn’t really hit my radar right now, because of the fact that my sleep is pretty unreliable anyway. That’s how it goes when there’s an eight-month-old in the room. Fortunately Sunday is my sleep-in day, so I got extra sleep time, regardless of what the clock said when I got up.

It was such a beautiful day today; easily the nicest day of the year so far. The sun was shining, and the temperature was right around fifty degrees. There was a little bit of wind, but it was a spring wind, so it seemed pleasant anyway. At least it did until I was running in to it.

Sixteen miles today. I haven’t run sixteen since last year when I was marathon training, so I was a little nervous about it, but fairly confident in my training thus far. Last year, sixteen was the first run I did that I ever bonked on. Probably because I was able to run up to and including fifteen without needing much in the way of hydration or fueling, so I didn’t have any kind of plan together for that. Because of my experience then, I was prepared today; I drove over to our friend’s house that happens to be on my course and dropped off a bottle of water and three bananas. And I had a hand-held bottle of Gatorade to take along with me. Then I drove back to my start line, about five miles away.

The temperature was perfect; I wore just a regular shorts and t-shirt and was very comfortable in that. It was funny to compare as I went along, because there were a ton of people out there today, taking advantage of the nice weather and extra sunlight. I saw more bikers, runners, walkers, etc. than I have in months, and the spectrum of clothes I saw ran from shorts and t-shirts, like me, to tights and jackets and hats and gloves. I suppose it’s all relative, but I couldn’t imagine wearing more than I was already, and when I was running with the wind, it even occurred to me I could have easily gone with just a running singlet instead.

The run itself went alright, I wasn’t feeling as fresh as I might have liked to, but I have no complaints, and I certainly didn’t bonk. I had two of the three bananas, all of the Gatorade, and some of the water on the way, in addition to having a salt packet halfway through. My legs felt pretty fatigued, but not the bodily exhaustion I had last time. The highlights of my run came a little over halfway, in the arboretum; I saw a big wild tom turkey, which is actually pretty common in the arboretum, because there are quite a few of them in there, I suspect, and they’re none too afraid of people, either. The other highlight was after I got passed by a guy going pretty fast; usually it’s a little demoralizing to get passed, but there were so many people out today, I got passed by a few. I always console myself with the idea that they’re probably not running anywhere near the distance I am, but it’s not a race, so no big deal anyway. But then about a mile later, I saw the same guy. (I knew it was him, because I recognized his shirt which had “how’s my running? Call [some number, which looked like a valid local number in this area code] which gave me a chuckle – I kinda wanted to call it.) He was walking back my direction, and when he saw me, he gave me a big smile and said “How’s it going, man?” and I said, “not bad, yourself?” to which he replied “all right” and I said “Great day for a run!” He said “You know it!” Little exchanges like that with fellow runners always make my day.

I haven’t written in a while, for various reasons; partly because I was busy with another writing project, partly because I’ve been with the kids and such, but mostly just because I have been lazy about it. I have not been lazy about running, however, so now I have three runs in the past week to catch up on.

All the way back on last Sunday, I did the final six-mile easy run of the three in my cutback week. Doing a run that short on a Sunday was a little odd, especially because rather than going out on the trails, I just did it close to home around the neighborhood. I did two laps of my neighborhood three-mile loop. It was a sunny, warm-ish day, and the first run in many months where I took off my windbreaker partway through. Nothing much eventful about it to speak of, as it’s not an especially exciting route. Normally I would have gone out to the bike trail anyway, but since I was doing a shorter run anyway, I decided not to draw it out any more than necessary, partially because the Big Ten wrestling championship finals were Sunday, and I had fleeting hopes of watching it on TV even though we don’t have the Big Ten network. I couldn’t scare up anybody that was willing to let me come over and watch, so I just followed it online. The Hawkeyes won their third consecutive Big Ten championship, as expected. That is all I will say about that.

On Tuesday, I did the first of what is scheduled to be several Tuesday two-mile easy runs. This one seemed excessively easy because of the fact that I was just coming off a recovery week, but I’m sure they will feel very appropriate in the future when they come two days after long runs of two to three hours. It felt so unusual to finish a run feeling like I had so much gas left in the tank. I don’t always finish feeling completely exhausted, or anything, but I typically feel like I had a good, solid workout; after I finished this one, it felt like I was just warmed up. Not that I was cold, each day this week has been getting progressively warmer, despite the clouds and rain that are typical of March. It has been mostly in the forties and fifties which has been wonderful to run in.

The highlight of my run on Tuesday was seeing three very large birds, which, after some later research, I determined to be sandhill cranes. I was able to make this determination because I saw one of them in flight; herons, it turns out, fly with their necks crooked back, wheras this bird had its neck outstretched, and because I was able to hear their calls as the two on the ground called to the one in the air, and vice versa. At the time I assumed that the two were trying to let the third know they were there so they could rendezvous. While I was researching, when I had it narrowed down to a crane (sandhill cranes are the only common ones in North America, so I read) I found a website which let me listen to the three types of sandhill crane call, and it was indisputably the third type: the distress call. I gather from this that the two on the ground had spotted me, and were shouting to the one in the air to stay away, as there was a crazy-looking guy running this way. It also explained why the flying one circled back the opposite direction instead of landing with the pair as I had assumed was his (or her) intention. Whatever the situation, they were very large and impressive birds, which I estimate (from a distance of eighty yards or so) to have been about five feet tall.

As an aside here, before I get to my Thursday run, as I was writing this, there was a knock at the front door, and when I answered a kid was fundraising for his high-school track team. I normally don’t donate for door-to-door fundraisers these days as I don’t have the money to spare, but I couldn’t pass up supporting a runner while I was writing about running. I asked him what he ran and he said “long distance” and my eyes lit up. A man after my own heart, I thought. So I said “one mile? Two mile?” and he said no, 800.” I smiled and gave him five bucks.

So on to Thursday. Thursday’s scheduled run was a six- mile tempo: one warmup, four hard, one cooldown. The fourth six-mile run in my last five runs, but this one INCLUDING THE STRETCH OF TRAIL I HAVE BEEN WAITING TO RUN ON FOR THE LAST THREE MONTHS. Finally, between the above-freezing temperatures and the rain, it is clear enough to be navigable. There are still three or four chunks of icy snow across the trail in various places, but they are small enough and few enough to make it traversable. This is a big deal because it opens up a lot of routes I have had to work around for a very long time. And on Thursday, I started and finished on it.

I’ll admit I haven’t mentally acclimated to the Thursday speedwork yet, but it’s getting better. This one was challenging, but I felt quite good after it. It might have been the spring weather, or the freshness of running a route that hadn’t been available to me for so long, or the fact that I was as fresh as I have been in weeks because of the low mileage in the last week, but maybe it was just because I figured out how to go hard without going too hard. Speaking of going hard, the looming spectre ahead of me is sixteen miles tomorrow. I haven’t done sixteen (or more) since last year’s marathon. I’ve done fifteen, but sixteen last year was the first run where it started getting hard. I’m confident I’m capable of it, but it might just hurt. No pain, no gain.