Sunday, 9/30/07 (60 minutes)
Ran as the sun set. My anterior tibialis were sore after the time trial, so I took both yesterday and today easy.
Saturday, 9/29/07 (am jogging at Riverside, pm 30 min with Ian)
I arrived at the gym almost ten minutes before anyone else, in the kind of morning where every sound only magnifies the quiet. I lay down on the island at the parking structure's entrance, and tried to make the moon float past the clouds. It's a perceptual trick. The motion of the moon across the sky is very slow by human standards, about 360 degrees per 24 hours, or 15 arcseconds per second. The is about the same speed as the tip of the minute hand of a clock 10cm in radius, viewed from a distance of about arm's length. That is, maybe, detectable. But the problem is that unlike the minute hand of a clock, the moon has nothing stationary behind it. Its motion relative to the stars and planets is much slower, and so you'll never see the motion of the moon by watching it with the naked eye on Earth. But when the clouds float by overhead, it can appear for a moment as though the moon is sailing through them, slicing its way past and illuminating in pale tones only its closest companions, for a few brief moments, until they move on, and are forgotten, replaced by new clouds, just coming into view. The moon consumes all of one ten-thousandth the night sky, as I estimated by holding my thumb up out in front of my face. But that one ten-thousandth can assume the attention of a man, or even of an entire race, when the moment is right.
Things quickly become different when there are people around. Though the night is equally dark and the moonshine equally brilliant, the splendor evaporates in the soft murmur of human voices standing not far away. So I went from forgetting about 99.99% of the sky to forgetting about all of it, which is a bigger shift than it mathematically appears. The guys performed shockingly well at Riverside. Matt, Sachith, Ben, Nathan, and Garrett all had big PR performances. With Cupcake finally asserting his desire to compete on the SCIAC stage again, the men's team now has three competitive runners up front, and a couple more who can run well against the some of the scoring runners from Cal Lu, La Verne, and Whittier. The SCIAC is still fairly-clearly divided between the teams that are trying to win year to year (this year, I'll pick Oxy, PP, CMS, Redlands in that order) and the teams that are racing against each other in the bottom half. But in that bottom half the competitive level has been rising for a few years now, at all the schools. I'm glad to see it, and only wish I had one more chance at racing for an all-conference spot.
After placing last in 2006, the men may move up a couple of spots this year, the last for Matt and David, who came in three years ago as the program's shining hopes. The women also had a good day. Katherine is unlikely to admit to being satisfied with a race performance, ever, but her blog entry is about as close to that as I expect to see. Justine continues to improve, and our 1-4 spread was only 36 seconds (although the 5th runner was another 40 seconds back of that). The only SCIAC competition available was from Redlands and Pomona-Pitzer, last year's 1st and 3rd place teams, but the women are ready for multi-duals, and could easily surprise some of the teams who beat them last year.
Also, I spent a lot of time playing this game with Matt where you throw a piece of fruit up in the air, then try to hit it with a second piece of fruit before it comes back down. It was pretty hard, but in the end I started playing with rocks, and then I won twice in a row. Finally, there was no Gerry Lindgren this year, since Hawaii didn't come and also he was fired for being insane, but I did get to take mile splits standing next to Steve Scott.
Friday, 9/28/07 (8000m time trial)
Missed the plane to Stanford due to general stupidity. Time trialed on the track instead. 8000m in 25:41.
5:11, 5:09, 5:07, 5:08, 5:06
Halves of 12:56, 12:45. 5000m in 16:06
Felt pretty okay. My right leg got tired before my left one, probably from going in circles. Other than that I was fine. No sprint, felt like a 90% effort.
Thursday, 9/27/07 (70 minutes, strides)
Doing this run has become sort of a default when I don't know what else to do. It's like trying to put everything on hold for a day. Long enough to be a legitimate training run, easy enough not to take anything out of you for a hard effort the next day.
Later, I was presented with a test of my manhood - an unopened glass jar of pasta sauce with a tight lid. I took several unsuccessful tries at opening it, redoubling my efforts only when Soyoung suggested maybe she should go find someone else to do it for her. I wiped the sweat off my palms and immediately heard air sucking in under the newly-liberated jar.
This reminded me that it's grip strength, not "twisting ability" that limits your ability to torque the lid - hence the usefulness of a thin, flat sheet of rubber designed for the purpose as an aid in opening the jars.
Suppose the jar will be opened when you apply a torque T Nm to the lid. Then the tangential force to be applied to either side of the lid is T/r N where r is the lid radius. If you plan on doing this by gripping with your hand, you'll need to have enough friction to prevent slipping, so mu*G > T/r, where mu=coefficient of friction between your hand and the lid, and G is the radial force applied to the lid, limited by your grip strength.
Making an experiment just now, I found that I am unable to do a "hands pullup", where I pull myself up a few centimeters by curling my hands into a ball using grip strength and keeping the angle of my forearms constant. I conclude my single-hand grip strength is less than my body weight of 700N. With a generous mu of .5, I can apply no more than about 200N (45 pounds) of tangential force to a jar lid. However, in my adult life I have not encountered any jars which I have been unable to open. I conclude that most American jars are not tightened with a force greater than 200N, but probably many are tightened with greater than 100N force, because I've frequently been asked to open jars by my mom, who I roughly judge to be no less than half as strong as I am.
Wednesday, 9/26/07 (70 minutes, strides)
My right achilles was sore during the run last night, but fine today. I think this may be because two days ago I was particularly aggressive in my rehab exercise, while yesterday I intentionally took off. So I think the exercises are helpful in the long run, but they day after they actually weaken me a bit.
In the past, I've gotten injured, started rehab exercises, shown no improvement, stopped rehab exercises, gotten better, resumed training, and eventually re-injured myself. My thinking in this process has been "these exercises aren't making me better. I should stop them." Then when I do stop them, I miraculously heal. But I've been adopting the thinking of a guy who learns about lifting weights to get stronger. So he goes to the gym and lifts weights. The next day he's sore and weak. So he stops doesn't lift. The day after that he feels great. So he assumes lifting makes him weak and rest makes him strong. Idiotic, perhaps, but it's what I'm frequently guilty of doing. There's also the rationalization: "I don't have time for such-and-such today, and besides I'm not hurting right now anyway." No matter how many aphorisms about ounces of prevention I hear, it never seems to sink in. But at least I've achieved temporary reprieve from injury, and am probably racing for the first time in a while this weekend.
We had a big snafu with the Juice team and being denied entry into the Stanford Invite. I think the race director is just mad all the good teams are running at Bill Dellinger instead.
Tuesday, 9/25/07 (90 minutes)
Good run with the NFTC (North Field Track Club), whose activities consist of Ian and I putting in some laps. Here is a fun math problem that I read from a book. It's not exceedingly difficult, but once you understand what to do there is room for some cleverness in the execution:
Three men (Adam, Alan, and Ryan) and their wives (Kara, Sara, and Shayne) were comparing their previous week of training. They noticed that each runner wound up for the week running the same number of total runs as they averaged miles per run (so if they ran five times, they also averaged five miles per run). Each husband ran 63 more miles than his wife. Alan did 23 more runs than Shayne, and Ryan did 11 more runs than Kara. Who is married to who?
I like this problem because for me, the moment I read the last line, my reaction was simply surprise. Who is married to who? That didn't seem to be where they were leading me (although on rereading it's the obvious thing to ask), but the fact that you can glean it from the information given is what makes the problem cute. (I considered calling it "elegant", but I think that word is better reserved for more meaningful uses).
Toy math has been helpful for me lately. I have one regular tutoring customer now. I like this kid - she's polite, smart, and most importantly, eager to learn. We were working today on the concept of acceleration. While this may seem straightforward enough, since people can intuit acceleration directly because we physically feel it, I was really hoping that she could get how the relationship between position and velocity is the same as the relationship between velocity and acceleration.
I don't think I'm a very good tutor, yet. I try hard at what I'm doing. But have you ever tried to teach someone to whistle? It's not possible. You can tell them each of the things they need to do, with their lips and tongue and how to breathe, but they will just sit there blowing air around and getting progressively more frustrated. The only way someone learns to whistle is by going and actually trying the thing for themselves, playing around and experimenting until they get it. At first they'll get it one moment, and forget it the next, and have no control over it. But once they have the basics of how to make some noise, the rest comes far more easily. The whistler will only get there, though, when they find they really want to, or else they'll never put in the effort required.
Teaching a math or physics concept is just the same. I cannot possibly teach you the concept of a derivative. I can explain it, ask you leading questions about it, give you examples of it. But the understanding, you must do for yourself. My job as a tutor, then, isn't to teach the concepts. It's to make you want to learn them. And here's where math came in.
Both my student and I were exhausted from banging our heads against the wall trying to communicate on this particular subject. I was giving example problems, trying to lead her on in small conceptual steps. And at one point, a problem required, as part of its solution, the computation 31-17. She dutifully wrote it out on the page (this is my favorite student, the one who doesn't automatically reach for the calculator for every computation).
31
-1731
-17
211
-17
___
14
Which is fine. It's right. It's effective. But it's not fun. So I saw an opportunity here, to help us both out, by taking a break and having some fun with math.
"That's right," I said, "but let's see if you can do it in your head. What's fifty eight minus twenty three?". No problem. You can easily see in your mind that you subtract the ones digits (three from eight) and the tens digits (two from five) separately, and then put them back together to get 35. She got it. "Good, try 91-31." I gave her a couple more, then asked, "What's 56-39?" Stumped. Once you try to "carry digits" as elementary school teachers would have it, it gets inordinately more difficult. So I told her I would teach her a short trick. I wrote this out (she is used to algebra, but not calculus):
56 - 39 = x
40 - 1 = 39
39 = (40 - 1)
substitute in
56 - (40 - 1) = x
56 - 40 + 1 = x
(56 - 40) + 1 = x
16 + 1 = x
17 = x
"But that's so complicated. It has so many steps. I can't do all that in my head!" she protested. I told her to have more faith in herself, and did a few more problems with her. Soon, she found that I was right - she could do the problems quickly in her head. 64-15 becomes 64-20+5 = 49. She can subtract any two two-digit numbers now just as fast as I can. So after this break, we went back to work, and in just five minutes she was answering questions about acceleration perfectly accurately, despite our having worked fruitlessly on it for a long time before before the math excursion.
My guess would be this sort of break worked because:
1) It gave her confidence - she was soon doing something she didn't know she ever could, and doing it easily.
2) It was fun. If you used to scrub the toilet with a toothbrush, and suddenly someone gave you a brush for Christmas, you'd probably go scrub the toilet with it right away. It's still a chore, but it's the comparison with what the thing used to be that makes it so suddenly enjoyable.
3) It was a break. Maybe we could have talked about tennis for five minutes and done just as well.
These things together had the effect that when we went back to the textbook, she was excited about learning, and keenly receptive for more. Hopefully, with many more such tidbits thrown into tutoring sessions throughout the year, my students will see that there is more to math and physics than formulas and methods to follow. I want my students to intuit answers before finding solutions. I do not want them to know anything by heart. I want them to know it by gut.
All this has little to do with running, except that the fundamental principle is the same. The ultimate motivation must come from within. No one can run your repeats for you any more than they can put the principle of least action into your head. You must do it for yourself.
Monday, 9/24/07 (no run)
Off. Soyoung finally came back from Korea! I decided to make food for her, but my muffins tasted as bland as cardboard. Actually worse. Think, "as bland as a bleached, desiccated cardboard cutout of Bob Dole," and you're getting close. Also made Hungarian Goulash, and completely forgot to make noodles. I suck at cooking, and probably always will due to anosmia. Of all the senses to lose though, smell is not that bad. At least this way I can stand my own company.
Book review: Marty Liquori's Guide for the Elite Runner (3 stars)
Another book review: The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin (4 stars)
If you click the above links then by something from Amazon, I will personally get a 4% kickback. I hereby vow to devote all funds gained in this manner to the greater good of the Caltech cross country and track teams, probably in the form of fruits, or if profits exceed expectations, new copies of Running Times for the training room.
9/24/07 - 9/30/07 not actually STANFORD (380 minutes, 8000m time trial)
9/17/07 - 9/23/07 "Nice hip abductors. Do you work out?" (400 minutes, 1 tempo, 1 rep workout)
Sunday, 9/23/07 (5 mile tempo)
In answer to Matt's list of fruits, here is a list of my favorite fruits, in order of favoritism. Someday I hope to make a similar list, but instead of fruits, it will feature my children.
Here are a few fruits I have either not eaten recently, or not eaten at all, and need to try sometime:
Here are some fruits that I don't especially like. I don't dislike them, but I won't go out of my way to get them. Eating one of these fruits is like riding the monorail at Disney World. Nothing wrong with it, but you know there are more exciting options available.
This is a very small sample of the culinary fruits available on Earth. Wikipedia has a much longer list.
Now that the important business is taken care of, I ran a 10-lap tempo at Lacy, taking a route back through the picnic tables to get closer to 800m/loop. I ran 2-lap splits of:
5:36, 5:34, 5:26, 5:28, 5:20 = 27:24 for the entire run.
This is the same run I did on 8/14/07, about a month ago, just after getting back from Stanford. But today I ran it more than a minute faster at the same or less effort. So I'm very pleased with how it went. I'm also pleased with the way I ran, telling myself to stay cool and relaxed, checking the watch only once per two laps and keeping myself under control and totally focused. It was fantastic. I feel pretty good going into Stanford six days from now.
They say the course is fast (short) but for now I'll just put the goal at setting a new PR, and if I get anything on top of that, it'll be a great bonus.
Saturday, 9/22/07 (90 minutes, strides)
The pattering of rain urged my too-willing body back to sleep this morning. I justified my torpor with baseless suppositions about the poor navigability of the arroyo trail and the futility of attempting a steady state there. Later, Sachith told me it hadn't been bad at all, but I remember many times trying to run in the arroyo during or after rain, and thinking a tempo would be nearly impossible. I think he was probably lying to me. Brown people do that a lot, you know.
I ran alone later in the day, making 90 minutes for the first time in recent memory - a sign that my injuries are recessing in step with my withdrawal from the roads. These two salient features of my recent training - my health and my aloneness (I don't say loneliness.), have been warring in my mind recently.
I would like to run with the team regularly. I enjoy running alone, but I enjoy good companionship even more. This isn't the full reason, though. Running with the team gives me some delusion of higher purpose. I get to think that, having been through four years of a Caltech education, and having improved my running consistently throughout that time, I've become a sage guide for the younger runners. I get to feel like I'm passing on my knowledge where it will do some good. And most importantly, I get something that implies. Because in order to pass on knowledge, you have to know something to begin with. So running with the team, in addition to its companionship and altruistic "do good for others" aspects, also contains an element an ego-boosting element. Not just because at the moment I'm in better shape for cross country than the team is, but because I'm up higher, on a different literal level, than the rest of the runners. There's nothing like having people below you to prove how petty the interior workings of your mind are.
On the other hand, I feel drawn to running alone, as well. Alone, I'm truly in charge. I take issue with some of Scott's training, and for years I've been modifying it the way I want - sometimes to good effect and sometimes to bad. It's hardly a reflection of my opinion of Scott. It's just my personality. I crave sovereignty. I want to be both in charge and responsible, self-motivated, self-coached, self-dependent. For me there's a beauty in aloneness. It's the beauty of simplicity. Whether running, reading, studying, writing, playing, or working, doing it alone forces me to a higher level of introspection of self-knowledge, which I love. There's no need to pretend to be interested, or pretend to laugh, when I'm alone. There's simply myself, and my thoughts. If I have demons, I'm alone with them, too. And I don't mind that at all.
I believe that at this stage in my life, my primary responsibility must be to myself - to understanding myself as fully and deeply as possible. How can I devote myself to others, help them and work with them and derive joy from life together, if I do not first know and appreciate my own being? How can I coach someone to a level I've never explored before myself? How can I become a guide before I've even found one way through?
Friday, 9/21/07 (70 minutes, strides)
Laps on the infield and some strides. Pretty straightforward run. I was having all sorts of gastric trouble because of eating sugar for the first time in maybe two weeks last night. Somehow it lingered all day. It was really bad. I was trying to tutor this girl in math, explaining what "domain" and "range" of a function mean, and I kept having to pause in my explanations and drill questions to squich my face up really tight and try to hold a fart in, because her mom was right in the next room, and there's no way that Asian woman would keep inviting me back in her home if I just keep dropping methane bombs in her daughter's face.
Thursday, 9/20/07 (25 minutes)
I was going to run more, but pyschologically it just wasn't there today. I was feeling stressed out about school, distracted, and I just kept getting the feeling that there was something better for me to be doing than running just then. So I stopped. Later I read Purcell, and suddenly understood a lot of stuff all at once. It was amazingly cathartic, and all because I stopped running. Maybe I'll write more about that later.
Wednesday, 9/19/07 (45 minutes)
Recovery day. North field laps.
Tuesday, 9/18/07 (reps)
20 wu, 6 strides, 2x300 (49, 47), 4x200 (31, 30, 29, 29), jog, 2 strides, 2 accelerations, 2 strides, short cd.
My goal here was to get a bit of training for the paces I haven't hit at all this summer except for strides here and there. Training is a pyramid - most of your time is spent at the slow paces at bottom, and a tiny bit is spent up top. But the whole pyramid is still there all year. Reason being that only a very small amount of work tends to be sufficient to maintain old fitness, while much more is needed to improve, and none at all yields atrophy. So this time of year a huge effort goes into slower paces from distance runs to tempos, but a little still goes into these faster guys. I wanted to run the 300's at date mile pace and the 400's at goal mile pace, but I probably got a little ahead of myself on both counts.
Monday, 9/17/07 (80 minutes, strides)
I started a letsrun thread bemoaning my injury woes. But I managed to get 80 minutes in without falling apart, which is the best I've done recently.
9/10/07 - 9/16/07 Bite My Asphalt (355 minutes, 1 fartlek)
Sunday, 9/16/07 (no run)
Took completely off. My big toe was hurting. There's always something new.
Saturday, 9/15/07 (40 minutes)
I love small cross country races like the open race at Aztec, where guys like Matt and Anton can place place in the single digits, rather than two or three. The winner ran 27:28, which is an excellent time for such a difficult course, but it won't win many collegiate races. The result was that a guy who is his team's leader, but used to being a middle-of-the-packer at large invites, was suddenly in the lead. When his teammates and friends cheered for him, their surprise was exceeded by their excitement, and both wrapped themselves around the race and its runners, pointing the way ahead and pushing the leader on to greater efforts. And when, after giving his teammates the thrill of watching him lead for four miles, an unattached runner came up alongside him to challenge for the win, he made the day into a perfect race for himself and his team by holding off the challenger and sprinting in for the win.
I couldn't help but be happy for the runner. Winning a race was, to judge by the reactions of his supporters, a triumph not only for him but vicariously for his entire squad. It was a rare charge of excitement a team like that rarely gets, and so savors all the more. If I could help bring something like that to Caltech, I'd consider my time and effort well-spent.
Friday, 9/14/07 (AM: 45 minutes, strides PM: 15 minutes, strides)
I decided it would be a good idea to sneak in a quick core workout before we left for the day. As a result, my back was horribly sore the entire drive down to San Diego, and slowly improved over the course of the weekend, so that on the drive back it was only mildly uncomfortable. This is encouraging, in that my body apparently still enjoys the regenerative powers of youth, but simultaneously discouraging, in that my brain still harbors the foolhardy decision-making processes of youth.
Thursday, 9/13/07 (fartlek)
4on, 2off x 6 at Garfield park. Felt good, controlled and strong. I like this sort of work, although I can probably put a little more into the rest periods for a stronger aerobic workout.
Also, I received this email from the Carlsbad woman. I'm now officially an elite distance runner!
To: Mark Eichenlaub
From: Lynn Flanagan
Mark, thanks for your interest in running the Carlsbad Half Marathon in
January. Our cut off for elite athlete men in the Half Marathon is 1:10.
It sounds like you will be very close to that so I will give you the comp
entry you are requesting. Please download an entry firm, fill it out and
fax to my attention at 760-692-2901. See you in January.
Lynn Flanagan
Carlsbad Marathon
Wednesday, 9/12/07 (60 minutes)
To: lflanagan@inmotionevents.com
Dear Mr./Mrs. Flanagan,
I'm writing to request an elite athlete entry to the Carlsbad Half Marathon this winter, because in my opinion Carlsbad is the premier half-marathon on the West Coast. I wrote several weeks ago with this request, but have not received a response.
I have run the race the last two years, and my finishing times and places were:
2006: 1:15:50, 21st overall, 4th 18-24 age group
2007: 1:13:01, 13th overall, 2nd 18-24 age group
My most recent race was April 30, 2007 when I ran a personal-best 15:28.21 for a 5000m track race (http://web.whittier.edu/athletics/spring_sports/trackandfield/2007/07SCIACresults.htm).
I anticipate that I will be fit enough to run a half-marathon in under 1:11:00 this winter. I am requesting an elite athlete entry because I believe my performance is comparable to that of other invited athletes (last year I finished ahead of 6 of the invited men), and I am eager to test myself against this higher caliber competition. I have enjoyed the fun atmosphere, beautiful course, and fine organization of the Carlsbad Half Marathon in the past, and so my hope is to be able to continue competing there in the future.
There are several options available for winter half marathons, and I'm trying to decide which race to register for, and so I would very much appreciate a response, either in the positive or negative.
Thank you,
Mark Eichenlaub
Tuesday, 9/11/07 (45 minutes)
Here is a fairly long and complicated story, which begins on Tuesday, and is intended to explain why I was late to practice on Wednesday morning:
After biking to practice on Tuesday morning, I went directly to Target because I needed supplies for my new room, having moved in with Matt's help on Sunday. I bought, among sundry domestic items, two bookshelves to stock my absolutely gratuitous supply of books, bloated throughout the last four years by a compulsive acquisitive habit that is neither productive nor financially sound.
My next step was to transport these bookcases back to my room, 1.3 miles away. I briefly considered the Herculean feat of hoisting the shelves onto my back, but thankfully for my nonexistent chiropractor, who I wish to remain in his purely hypothetical state, I chose to use a Target shopping cart instead. I didn't know the carts are equipped with an automatic wheel-locking device which prevents them from rolling (or, being rolled) out of the Target parking lot.
So, after struggling with the cart for about three minutes, and stopping to eat a recently-purchased Clif Bar (I hadn't had breakfast. And by the way - don't go shopping when you're extremely hungry. Candy and other junk food begins to look far too tempting at that time. The ideal time to go shopping is right after you eat an entire plate of brownies, and feel so guilty about it you'll take home nothing but tofu, carrots, and omega-3-fatty-acid-enriched flaxseed bran fiber powder to eat for the next week.), a friendly old guy told me what the heck had happened, and helped me transfer my stuff into a working cart still inside the parking lot.
I went back to the store, managed to flag down the "cart guy" (identifiable by his orange vest and shoulders permanently stooped to the height necessary to rest his forearms on a shopping cart's plastic push bar) and ask him to allow me to take the cart back. Amazingly, he agreed to do this, and even personally escorted me all the way out to the sidewalk.
It was hot. The cart wouldn't go straight. The weight was all in the front, making it impossible to get over the smallest cracks and bumps in the sidewalk. The sidewalk sloped, pushing the cart out into the street. The wheels stuck. My hands were sweating and slipping on the plastic bar. I had half an hour of walking, pushing, and grunting ahead of me. My left arm was horribly sore from having to torque the cart in one direction all the time. And as if all that wasn't bad enough, everybody in Asia is getting killed by earthquakes and panda bears and shit.
But at last, I finally got the stuff back to my apartment. When I got back to north Garfield, where I live, I saw there was a farmer's market set up directly outside my house - so things were finally going my way. I stashed my stuff up by my room, took the cart back outside and left it on the grass while I walked through the stalls at the market. I was buying all sorts of fruits and vegetables, many of which I couldn't even identify. "Cuanto cuesta?" I said (everyone was speaking Spanish.) "Buck fifty a pound, man," the guy replied. At least he was charging me the same price as everyone else, I think. I probably spent fifteen minutes wandering through the market, and when I was done, I saw that my impromptu plan had worked perfectly - while I stocked up on fresh fruits and veggies, someone had come along and stolen the cart.
Now, I didn't purposefully lose the cart. I didn't give it to anyone. I didn't fail to return it, either. How could I after it had been stolen? All I did was leave it out in front of my house for a few minutes. Not my fault someone came along and took it. And this relieved me of the responsibility of pushing the damn thing a mile and half back to Target. So I spent the rest of the day eating slightly-mealy, unidentified fruits and assembling bookshelves.
The next morning, I got up as usual at 6:20, went to the bathroom, checked email, etc. and at 6:40 went to go to practice. I went out by the garage only to discover that my bike was gone. After just a moment of wondering who could have stolen it, I remembered - it was still locked up outside Target because I walked back with the cart instead of riding back. Perhaps I should have attempted to put the bike in the cart, but I wasn't thinking that far ahead to begin with. So instead of biking in to campus in the morning I had to walk to Target first, unlock the bike, and only then roll the rest of the way in. So that's why I was 15 minutes late to practice this morning, just in case you were wondering.
Monday, 9/10/06 (60 minutes AM, 20 minutes + drills PM)
It's been a while since I did drills and plyos with Susan. On mildly-injured legs I had to sit a few out, but in general I think these could be helpful if I do them regularly enough. They force my legs through an increased range of motion, encouraging dynamic flexibility, which is sorely lacking from a training schedule which, to be honest, is primarily consisted of slow-moderate paced running.
I think they were fairly rough on me, since the next day I could only manage 45 minutes before the achilles started to feel mildly insulted by the load I was placing on it, but with practice and gradual adaptation these could be a valuable training tool.
9/3/07 - 9/9/07 Leaving My "Mark" (360 minutes, 1 tempo run, 1 interval workout)
Sunday, 9/9/07 (3xarroyo tempo)
3 lap arroyo tempo: 8:57, 8:50, 8:33 = 26:20
I planned six laps, but on the second lap I started pushing too hard, just because I was worried that the numbers on my watch were too slow. If a great workout is one where you get the numbers on your watch right, then a great performance of Barber's "Adagio for Strings" is here. The notes are right, the dynamics are correct, the tempo is just as written in the score, and all the rhythms are technically exactly spot-on. But of course, the music itself is so awful, it can't even be criticized as a serious performance - only laughed at.
A workout is not something copied out of a book and run just according to a schedule. It's a definitively human endeavor, requiring human interpretation on the spot to achieve its goals. The value of a great workout is in the subtleties of the runner's sense of pace, his mental attitude, his form and rhythm and effort. The goals times and sets and reps are only as much of a guide to the athlete as the notes in a musical score are to the conductor.
I know all this, but why don't I practice it when it comes to me actually getting down and doing the physical workout? Why, when I lace up my shoes, do I become I an idiotic automaton, forgetting everything I know about running and obsessing over something as small and trivial as an LCD riding along on my wrist?
BTW, you can find a recording of the adagio here. Maybe not the best recording ever, but free, and at least played by human beings.
Saturday, 9/8/07 (50 minutes)
Observing the UCI Invite (women). Jogged the grass field barefoot. My legs felt oddly tired, but in light of the excitement of seeing the team race for the first time, I didn't mind. Matt and Anton both ran excellent races (Matt 10th and Anton 16th SCIAC finishers, with Occidental, Cal Lu, LaVerne, and Redlands present).
The girls looked even better than the guys, with Sam, Katherine, Perrin, and Masha all running competitively in the pack.
Both teams are a little short on depth right now, but I'm looking for improvement as the season progresses.
Friday, 9/7/07 (40 minutes, 4 strides)
North field barefoot laps and long diagonal strides. IT band seems somewhat improved.
Thursday, 9/6/07 (30 minutes, 3 strides)
North field barefoot laps and long diagonal strides.
Wednesday, 9/5/07 (45 minutes)
I'm sure now that the last few days of public wanton soft-tissue raping have resulted in mild nascent ITBS in my left knee.
Humans are really put together rather poorly for running. Some people might try to tell you that humans are made for running, but don't believe them. We maybe started to be made for running, but really we only had three million years to work on it. These things can't be rushed, you know. Here are some things you can get and the appropriate time scale you will have to wait for them:
Tuesday, 9/4/07 (Shenandoahs)
Watch this video (starting about 4 minutes in) of decathlete Paul Terek in a distance race on the Japanese game show "Muscular Athlete Championship!" It's not clear to me what the rules are, exactly, but it's at least pretty clear that Terek put the smack down.
Terek isn't even a strong 1500m runner, as decathletes go. He ran 4:37 in Osaka (although to be fair his best is 4:24). His best event is pole vault. But that's really irrelevant. The real reason they put him on the show is that standing next to those Japanese guys, Terek is a monster. At 6'2" 190, it's not even fair. Apparently kids in Japan, recognizing him from TV, would swarm around Terek demanding he take off his shirt to show them his muscles.
Did 5xShenandoah in the morning, going 4:08, 4:04, 4:00, 3:58, 3:54. Faster than I last ran them in 2005. Not as fast as Ian once ran them, but on the other hand, he had McGrail there that day. I was running in the vicinity of Kiesz, but basically alone. Also, Ian can apparently run these 12 seconds slower and hit a faster race time (27:15 at Westmont 2006 vs 27:27 at Riverside 2004).
The workout felt pretty good. The first couple were on cruise control. On the fourth one I started having to push a little, although the fact that Matt was running fast recoveries and starting out in front of me probably spurred me on a bit more than I would have spurred myself (naked cowgirl chicks spurring themselves would be an awesome porn idea. all yippe-kie-yay and lassoes and tall leather boots and blood everywhere.)
I had a little cramp going in to the last one, but shit like that doesn't get in my way.
After finishing I went back down for a bonus round. Fuck yeah.
Monday, 9/3/07 (70 minutes mountain style)
We ran at some park or other. It had a name, and I think it was pretty happy in an I-love-nature-by-which-I-mean-the-Nature-Channel sort of way, like Bouncing Deer Falls or Squirrel Frolic Nutchomping Park. Anyway after a warmup that involved lots of high-fives, I ran 25 minutes up to the handicap-accessible bathroom conveniently placed 2/3 the way up a mountain fire road, in case you break your legs falling off a cliff, and then while you're waiting for the paramedics you really have to take a crap, so you build your own wheelchair out of twigs, acorns, and human hair, and roll yourself over to the john. Then I turned around and dodged the legions of bikers I had passed on foot coming up, and upon returning enjoyed Katherine's (water)melons.