great, i think i broke my toe.

19 days to withered quads

Prior to this past Monday 7/6/09, I hadn't run for about 19 consecutive days. Holy smokes.

On Monday, I ran 9.5 miles and after less than 3 miles in, my quads felt completely shredded. At the end of the run my legs were so toast. On Tuesday I ran about 6 miles, and my quads were toast before, during, and after the run. Hurt to climb stairs, the whole works.

I can't believe that after running for so long, for so many months and years, my legs crumbled so quickly!

I can only hope they bounce back as quickly as they withered. If I am able to simply reclaim my fitness level from 19 days ago (by the time the marathon rolls around in October) let alone build on it, I would be happy.

I wouldn't trade my 19 days off from running for once second. We embarked upon an incredible adventure that we will never forget. We went on our honeymoon in Europe; in 15 days we covered London, Paris, Florence, and Rome. I can't put it into words. It was amazing. The world will never look the same. We walked for at least 8-10 hours per day.

One of our favorite things was the bike tour through Tuscany. Starts at a castle where they've been making wine and olive oil for 800 years, then takes a 13-mile loop through incredible backdrop of vineyards, villas, and olive groves throughout the hills of Chianti. Toward the back half of the ride we got to tackle a 17% grade hill, which was super fun. It was easy to picture myself as a member of team Astana, training in the hills of Italy :)

Yesterday morning: 18.93 miles in 2:43:23 (8:38). First half at 8:43, last half in 8:32. My splits were fairly consistent around 8:40 pace, excluding mile 12 where I got a little excited (7:53). My average heart rate was 140, but as the air warmed, it continued to climb steadily throughout the run.















The temperature was about 20 degrees warmer vs. last week, and I think that was the major factor that impacted the rest of my Saturday. I was pretty worn out and felt like I was moving at a slower speed for the rest of the day. My legs were a little sore and stiff as well. I took a nap in the late afternoon but it didn't seem to revive me much. It was like old times! This used to be my status quo every weekend during marathon training. Although, I used to feel wiped out on Sundays too.

Today I feel a lot better though. I probably won't be able to get any more long runs in for a few weeks, more on that later. ciao!

Yesterday morning: 20.34 miles in 2:54:32 (8:35). First half at 8:49, last half in 8:20. Mile 19 in a controlled 7:58, mile 20 at 8:16, last 0.34 at 8:05 pace. I feel fine today (Sunday), no soreness or tightness.
















For the week: 64 miles on 6 runs, avg pace 8:31.

Part II

Where'd we leave off?

Mondays are my absolute worst days. I didn't even realize it at first, but then it dawned on me that by late Monday afternoons, I'm really feeling sorry for myself. That's not usually my gig. Generally I'm active, positive, hopeful, and keeping myself busy.

When you are "forced" to crawl out of bed on Monday mornings to go work for 'the man', well lets face it, you get grumpy and dream about being in total control of your Mondays.

After a period of time, I began to view every Monday as the start to another week where millions of people are out there being a productive member of society. They are accomplishing goals, acquiring new skills, polishing talents, pressing the flesh, contributing to the growth engines of their respective companies.

On Monday's I get out of bed fairly early, between 6:30am and 7am. I read all of the news regarding the markets (6 or 7 main sites). I turn on cnbc and digest economic news and other happenings. The economic data as of late is what I would characterize as "less worse" (which is essentially of no help, "only 500,000 people were laid off last month, things are getting better", oh yay).

I check other news sites. I review my contact lists. I look for job postings that don't exist. I drink diet coke, coffee, and eat clif bars. I mope.

I usually get out for a run, but it is hard for me to get out the door on a Monday. I don't like to be out and about in public on Monday because then I feel like a schmuck.

Part 1

Due to certain circumstances (that I will not delve into), this was not unpredictable. I've seen plenty of unsuspecting people get sideswiped, and its really painful to watch. Really painful. If you've ever witnessed a mentor, a senior partner, or a peer crumble right before your eyes, you know what I'm talking about. And at times it can be like that new rollerblader on the lakefront path that has lost his balance; they know and everyone around them knows what is occurring but human nature has them waiving their arms and contorting their body in all sorts of unusual ways to save themselves... to no avail. This was a little different however.

The most tenured got the call first. We all looked at each other and essentially nodded our heads in silence. Yep we knew it, and here it was, for all of us.

Usually the first two stages involve denial and anger. We skipped right past those and moved into stage 3. In this stage, you study the fine print. Stage 4: You do the math based on the fine print. Stage 5: Pack up and get out of dodge.

Stage 6: You get on the phone and call everyone you know in the biz to see whats going on locally. This usually takes a couple of weeks, because you are going to need to follow-up on everything. If you're smart, you've already had your ears open, so you should already know about any major items of interest. You should have a few interviews under your belt already. You don't work a decade in this field without having a sixth sense for business trends. Its the smaller items that take more time and digging though.

When you've been doing something for a decade, some habits are hard to break. For weeks, I would roll over in bed in the wee hours of the night searching in the dark for my (now nonexistent) blackberry to check on any breaking news. As soon as I crawled out of bed every single morning (7-days/week), I would search around for my nonexistent wireless email device to see what was going on at the nonexistent office. Constant news feeds, trends, emails, minute-by-minute data points, to some these might be a nuisance. To someone like me these things are (were??) like breathing. When you're hooked in, you can draw conclusions and make bets about things that will happen in the future. You can draw conclusions based on small changes in mannerisms, a change in voice inflection, or slight changes in the answers to your carefully crafted questions. You can piece together your carefully researched feeds of publicly available data and conversations with your web of contacts, and make sound predictions about the future. When your predictions become reality, you get this burst of adrenaline that shoots through your body. Then you start all over again with new information, to piece together the next prediction. Its not even that you make 1 prediction and then start over, one tracks hundreds of data points constantly, and needs to track their movements all the time.

I digress, but the point is, in stage 7 you are going to experience withdrawals.

Interlude: A New Series

Stay tuned to a new multi-part series covering such things as:

-The mid-week pace of life
-Feelings, then and now
-Angst
-Reservations
-Positives
-Daily routine
-Connections