Back on the Right Track

Thursday brought another day of teacher meetings. I generally have nothing useful to input in these meetings and Thursday was no exception. Usually, I try to stay awake and look interested, although more than one person has told me I look angry/in pain during meetings. Fortunately for me, there were some funny discussions to keep me amused. The two favorite moments of the meetings were:
1. When discussing how to align the curriculum so that all classes that teach about The Holocaust could cover the topic concurrently, it was suggested that we could connect it to science by investigating the gas used in the gas chambers. I think we are going to shelve that one for now.
2. Somehow a field trip to New York for the 5th graders was brought up. It was pretty clear from the conversation that there was no way the trip would happen, yet the idea kept resurfacing over and over somehow. One of my coworkers suggested that the kids could take a tour of Central Park with this guy who knows all of the edible plants and "medicinal herbs" in the park. Mrs. Daly quickly moved the discussion on to a new topic, saying "I'm sure there are plenty of people with medicinal herb in Central Park but let's talk about ..."
I ran 30 minutes before the meeting and 100 minutes that evening. On Friday, we had a final short meeting and then I turned in my grades to officially be done with my first year of teaching. I definitely need the break this summer will offer but, at the same time, I am excited for next year. I will teach 8th grade science again and pick up a section of 8th grade math, which should be a good experience. I had a basketball game on Saturday and the plan was to run 30 minutes before the game and 60 minutes in the evening. I ended up not running before the game, going for a 45 minute bike ride, and running 30 minutes in the evening. Today, I had my first race since the Groton 10k: the 5k at the USATF New England Championships. In the morning, I ran 30 minutes at home to begin warming up for the race and then hopped on the train to go to MIT, where I ran another 20 minute warm up. I hadn't run on the track since the 2006 UAA Championships and was somewhat unsure of what to expect. The race played out as well as I could have hoped for, as I was able to clip off 75 second laps the entire race. There was a pack of three runners ahead of me for the first half of the race, but they came back to me at around the 3k mark. One of the guys fell off the pace immediately, leaving me and my teammate Kibrom up front with some guy who was doing tai chi or pilates or some crap at the starting line. Kibrom took off and gapped us by about 20 meters and it was me and yoga man fighting it out for second with 1200 to go. I was able to keep my even splits and dropped the other guy with 600 to go. I noticed that Kibrom was coming back to me and I started to make a move to catch him. In all fairness, he was only slowing because he didn't know where the finish line was (he is Ethiopian and his English is still shaky) but I wanted the win bad. I ended up reeling him in and was a half step behind him on the home stretch. He was able to just barely hold me off by half a second. I finished in 15:30 and I figure my last lap was around 68. I cooled down for 55 minutes to give me 120 minutes total for the day. I had never been to MIT before and I was expecting some nerdiness, but they made the engineering school at WashU look like a frat house. They have this huge window that looks down into their pool area and there are equations and derivations written all over. I couldn't help but think about the scene from Good Will Hunting, "So this is a Hahvad bah?" They also sell Stephen Hawking shirts in their book store. I ended up totaling 650 minutes for the week on 11 runs. The good thing is that I doubled four days. The bad thing is that two of the days I didn't double, I only ran 30 minutes. One exciting development for the week was breaking $3,500 in donations for the Lance Armstrong Foundation. Thank you again to everyone who has helped me so far to reach my goal of $5,000. This post is getting long. I am going to eat a big bowl of ice cream and hit the hay.

Thank Jesus For the Steeplechase

Before I get into the happenings of the past few days, I would like to extend a special thanks to Joe Guinness who was kind enough to notify me that today, June 14th, is International Weblogger's Day. This is a very special moment for me, considering this is the first time I have celebrated the holiday as a weblogger. It was special before when I simply enjoyed other people's blogs, but the day takes on a special meaning now that I am publishing a blog myself. Now, on to the exciting stuff. On Monday, I ran 30 minutes in the morning. Around noon, I left on a bus packed with 13 year olds hopped up on caffeine to chaperon the 8th grade retreat. It was held in Maine at the summer home of the headmaster of Epiphany. The house is amazing. It is right on the water and there is a pool, basketball court, tennis court, and a trampoline. Most importantly, there is a large lawn that allows for tremendous games of croquet. I spent the entire day swimming, beating my roommates in croquet, bouncing kids on the trampoline, eating ice cream, playing on a slip 'n' slide, and launching model rockets with one of the 8th graders. And I got paid. When I got back to Boston on Tuesday, I had to go take the first part of a course to get recertified as a lifeguard. I went running after my course finished and everything went smoothly until the last 15 minutes of my run. I was running home on the sidewalk with traffic going in the opposite direction I was running. Ahead of me, I saw two cars bumping into each other. The one closest to the sidewalk was getting run off the road by another car trying to change lanes. As I watched this all happen in slow motion, the next thing I knew, the one car was veering off the road onto the sidewalk and coming right towards me. I have no idea what went through my mind, but I continued to run towards the car and hurdled over its hood as it smashed into the building to my left. I came out without a scratch but was pretty freaked out. There was a woman on the corner up the street from where the crash happened and I yelled "Holy shit! Did you see that?" She replied "I sure did. Boy, you better thank Jesus." I was so shaken up I didn't know what to do and gave her a hug. Then, I waited for the police, gave them my contact information, and finished up my 100 minute run. Not to be overly dramatic but, if I hadn't jumped over that car, I would be dead or in the hospital. Finally, all of the hurdle drills I did for the steeplechase were actually useful. The past two days were very boring and packed with teacher meetings (please don't get mad if you read this Mrs. Daly). When not trying to stay awake at school, I ran 30 minutes in the morning and 90 minutes in the evening on Wednesday and 90 minutes this morning. I just finished running a 30 minute double today. Look for a wrap up of the week on Sunday. Hopefully, I will not have any more near death experiences between now and then.

Catching Up

So this is what I did last week. It isn't much, and I really need to get back on track. I ran 80 minutes on Monday, 110 minutes on Tuesday, and 80 minutes on Wednesday. On Thursday I took off, and can't remember what my rationale was at the moment, although I am pretty sure it was pure laziness. On Friday, I ran 30 minutes, then took Saturday off and ran 90 minutes on Sunday. It was a very poor week but, like I said in my previous post, school gets crazy at the end of the year. Getting grades together and preparing for graduation was basically my life from Thursday to Sunday. My Greater Boston coach says that life is a conspiracy to keep people from training. I am beginning to believe him. Fortunately, I will be able to start a routine of running twice a day tomorrow. I always do better when I have a routine.

Better Late Than Never

This is what I had typed out for two weeks ago. Sorry for the delay in posting; school becomes all-consuming at the end of the year between graduation and grades.
My training has been going very well lately and I have been running much more than I ever have before. In the past, I have run a random 100 mile week here and there. Over the past month and a half, I have been between 90 and 105 miles for all but one week. Last Tuesday, all of those miles really caught up with me. I went to practice fully intending to run a workout but felt so terrible on the warm-up that I decided to bag my tempo run and do an easy 100 minute run instead. I was very tired on my run, but hoped I would recover by Wednesday. I slogged through a miserable 30 minute run on Wednesday, feeling like complete crap the entire run. After getting home, I decided I needed to take some rest to get my legs back under me. I took three days off, stretching from Thursday to Saturday. Each day I rode my new bike on some errands but did not run a step. On Sunday, I ran 30 minutes and felt fine. I followed that up with 80 minutes on Monday and 100 minutes yesterday, feeling solid on both runs. In looking at my training leading up to my unplanned break, a few things stood out to me that I need to change about my training. First, I need to stop worrying about the pace of my runs. I don't think it is a coincidence that I figured out the mile marks for my runs a couple weeks before getting worn out. Second, I need to really be consistent with running twice a day, five days a week. This will keep me from trying to get in extra miles on my second runs. The third and final thing I need to do pertains to my long run. I need to alternate runs of 150 and 180 minutes, because three hour runs wear me out quite a bit.