This could be...

...one of my better entries, but then again, maybe not, as time is flying by this morning and I'd really like to get to work on time for a change. Let's try a little tempo blogging, shall we? The first theme for today is post-purchase product research. I've got a habit for buying things on impulse, then once the dollars are already spent, digging up some info and finding out more about what I should have bought, or more appropriately, trying to justify the uninformed purchase I made in order to feel good about it.

The first occurrence of this that I can recall was way back when I decided to start cycling. I'd ridden a lot as a twelve year old on my trusty LaPierre (that's right, the same LaPierre that supplied bikes to FDJ for the Tour last year). At age 23, gaining a bit of weight from gym workouts and deciding I needed an aerobic outlet, getting a bike was the logical choice. Without any research, I bought a $169 Motobecane Nomade. Why a Motobecane? Because my high school business teacher used to commute the twenty miles each way from Cambridge to Easton on one. Yes, that's right, even though my career in high school was the worst two years of my life, I took business class. After all, it was the voke. They taught us stuff like how to do our taxes, because we were supposed to be out in the real world fixing cars and plumbing toilets the day after graduation (a day that never came for me...). Speaking of which, if you like reading IRS forms, check this out, especially if you gave any money to the Tyler Hamilton Foundation. Maybe the CPA's in the audience can tell me I'm wrong, but it looks like this organization raised about $400,000 in the name of MS research, paid $85,000 to the director of the foundation (what fucking CEO makes 20% of the total take? How can I get this job?) and spent the rest on "event expenses" thus donating a grand sum of $0 to any actual MS cause. The fine print looks like they justify their existence by claiming to somehow promote the MS cause through their events and therefore provide some kind of boost to the legitimate MS fundraising efforts of others. Alrighty then...

Where were we? Oh yeah, so I bought my Motobecane, started riding, bought some cycling magazines, found out what a piece of shit it was, got a real bike the next year, started racing, and here we are. The buy now, research later pattern continued over the next few decades, with computers, cameras and other stuff like that. So what did I buy this time? Nothing. No purchase, but now that I've started run training, and been at it for a few weeks, I'm interested enough to start looking around and reading about it. This time I did do a little checking around before stepping up my program, and found the FIRST plan that I'm sort of following. This weekend I started looking around some more, and found several good articles on coolrunning.com, including one that chronicles a runner's preparation for a marathon using a three day per week training plan. Of course, with millions of runners out in the wild, this plan I found is nothing new and it and others like it have been discussed and debated by many in the running community. If I'd done more than ten minutes research I might have known this already.

The guy was a lot more experienced than I am, but his findings were still similar. Most notably, he says how the pace specified for the long runs is pretty damn fast, more of a long tempo run actually. So far, I have still not been able to hold it. This week we worked our way up to 11.2 miles in 1:30, an 8:08 average, same as last week. This is over 20 seconds/mile slower than my target. It's not so bad though, as we were doing much better until we encountered a monster hill that climbed over 300 feet in 3/4 mile. Yeah, that's right, a 10% grade. It sucked and that mile took 9:45. You can read all about it over on KL's blog. So, right now I'm thinking that the program's target half mary pace of 20 seconds/mile slower than my 10K best might be a bit too aggressive. There are several other training plans on coolrunning.com, and all of them show example runners with far higher weekly mileage than I've ever run going for target paces much slower than mine. With my lengthy cycling background, I'm a special case. Can you say that? Special. Sure you can. I've still got a few months.

OK, we're out of time. Congratulations to all the mofos who raced CX Nationals this weekend. That course must have been cool without the snow from last year. I'm sure it was a real power course, which means you had to be really fit, ideally peaking for this weekend in order to do well -- a good reason why I wasn't there. I did do a ride on Saturday, covering an astounding 20 miles in just 1:55 (WTF?), but that's a story for another morning. Thanks for reading.