Post Number 420

Good thing I went back and checked my previously used post titles, because I was going to call this one Reasons to be cheerful, 1-2-3. As suspected, I've already used this. I'd even forgotten about the old lyrics titles themes. Scrolling through the list, I found quite a few that either I've repeated or someone else has used.

So what's the three reasons? For starters, this week's training went well. Nothing huge, but consistent work. With 98% of the snow and ice gone from the woods, I got back to training out at NRT. Twice I even ran in shorts, even though the temps remained in the 30's. The muddy ground was nice and soft, perfect for training. My contempt for mud when on the bike is legendary, yet I'm finding while running I'm a bit of a mudder. Remember the UNH cross race of 2006? I practically ran the entire thing and had a blast. This week's training runs reminded me of that, although there were no shin deep puddles this time. The mush is great for building power though, and easy on my aging knees.

These runs were combined with quite a bit of time on the trainer. Two times I even bricked them together. Reading the tri-blogs must have twisted my thinking. These sick fucks do three hours indoors. Saturday I pushed it out to two. That was enough, but not as bad as I thought it would be. I made it that far by breaking out the track bike and hitting the rollers for about half of it. The 56x17 is a little much though, even with no resistance. I think I'll probably back it down to a 54x20 or something, and maybe take that opportunity to swap out the cranks from the track 170s to my standard 175s. Rollers were a nice change though, and I got back in the groove fairly easily. Earlier in the week I skipped going to Elite because I wasn't recovering from the weekend. I made up for it Friday night with a great session of tossing the medicine ball all over the plyo room. My legs were pretty smoked, but it was good to put together a real week of training.

Next up was this morning's 5 mile Paddy Kelly Road Race over in the jewel of Brockton, DW Fields Park. Saturday's brick had left me feeling my age when I woke up today, so I didn't have very high hopes going in. My training runs haven't been fast or energetic in the last several weeks, and I've come to understand that I was on a much higher peak back around Thanksgiving than I realized at the time. So nothing like lowered expectations to make the results feel better.

The Westgate Lounge, headquarters for the race, is only about three miles from my house. Oddly enough, this isn't the closest race of the year, as we have two right here in town that I walk to. My penchant for arriving at races a tad late is well known, and it sometimes seems that the closer a race is to home, the later I get there. Well, not this time, as with an 11 am start and only a ten minute drive, I was quite early. Yet somehow I managed to come wicked fucking close to missing the start. My watch , which I thought set itself via the GPS satellites, must have been ten minutes slow. When I went to warm up, I met up with Kent Landrun, my first bike racing team captain from way back in '87 on BRC. It was great to see him again, and that deserves its own post, coming soon. So I finish my warmup out on the first mile of the course, and I'm heading back to the start at what I think is about ten minutes to 11, and I'm wondering where the hell everybody is. Well, the line comes into view and I hear the bullhorn and the race director is saying "one minute to the start." FUCK! So much for striders, it's time to run the 200 all out. I get to the crowd, peel off my outer shirt, ditch my water bottle, elbow in, runners take your mark, go! My HR was 160.

There was a bit of a clusterphuck 50 meters out at the first big puddle, but I settled in behind the leaders, who included Dave Schadd from the Turtles and Heather C, the former All-American from just three cubes over at work. She hadn't raced since September, so I had no idea how fast she'd run, but I knew Dave had been killing it in our age group lately, and if I could keep him in sight I'd probably PR. The first 3/4 mile is pretty flat, and Dave was only about 20 meters ahead. Just before the course's only hill, I went by Heather, trying to stay with Dave. There were a few other dudes right around me, but they all looked younger. Dave seemed to be chasing someone though, so I had a feeling someone further up was in our age group too. Cresting the hill, I took the mile one marker at 5:36. I was feeling it. That was faster than I wanted to go.

This course is about form and rhythm. There are only a few little rises and then a decent downhill in the last mile. Mile two took around 6:01 and Schadd was pulling away a bit. My HR was 164, right where I wanted it, so I just tried to maintain my pace and see if I had anything left in the last mile. Two guys passed me in the third mile, one I don't know, and then Chris Kelly from HFC. Both are in the 40-49 too. Third mile was a 6:03. Fourth mile a 5:58. Full gas down the hill. I stayed with Chris for a bit but then he cranked it up. Those guys were all out of reach. I thought I picked it up a lot for the last mile but it ended up being another 5:58 for a 29:35 finish, 10th overall, 5th in my age group, still a PR by 20 seconds, and over a minute faster than I ran this last year. It wasn't a total loss for the second floor east, as Heather ended up winning the women's overall even though she finished outside thirty minutes. I cooled down for a bit and then it started raining and getting cold, but I met up with Kent as he finished, which was fun. I also saw Billy Holmes, another old-time BRC guy's name in the results. On to Foxboro next week.

Reason 3? Well, as much as I don't like to take pleasure in the failures of others, as well as keep the blog focused on the joys of sport, watching a hater like Romney go down this week was friggin' sweet. If you missed last Friday's Daily Show, go buy it off Itunes. I couldn't have said it better. Goodbye Mittler! Thanks for reading.