Doug's Running Thingy

Made the mistake of running a trail that I haven't run in several months - Red Bug mountain bike trail. Well, it used to be quite runnable and a lot of fun. Apparently they have done tons of work to get it back to a true mtb technical trail - lots of moguls and sharp turns and banked features. Kinda cool but my fastest mile was about 8:45. Legs are sore already - glad I'm not racing until saturday

Lovely sunrise run in the neighborhood this morning.  Proud of myself for getting out the door after a fairly late night of photo processing after the City Championship meet.  Travis ran a decent strategic 1600, placing 2nd in 4:28.  He and another kid cruised through 1200 hitting 68, 68, 68, and then Travis made the first (and unfortunate) move with 300 to go - he came off the turn and tried to surge past the other guy down the backstretch... fail.  He tucked in to start the last turn and then regrouped and looked like he may take him down the homestretch, but legs were shot with 20 meters to go.  He then put it in cruise control for a 2:06 5th place finish in the 800 and a 10:36 5th place in the 3200 - more of a workout kinda evening after the 1600.  A good evening all in all.  He gets 10 days of no racing now before Districts next Friday.

Planned a nice easy 5-6 miles as my last run before racing on Saturday.  At 2.5 miles my left achilles exploded... well, thats kinda what it felt like at first.  Flat, straight, level trail with no rolling of ankle or anything - very strange.  Walked for a while and then walked/ran back to the jeep.  Iced it and will see how it goes tomorrow - likely a race morning decision to run or not - bummer.

Pretty good race this morning on the hilly 10K Springtime Tally course.  A bit crowded for first half mile, but went 6:38 for the mostly downhill mile 1.  The mostly downhill last mile was 6:44, and all the hilly ones in the middle were between 7:10 and 7:15.  Really felt fine the whole way and think I could have gone sub 42 if I was in the mood.  Just kinda ran this one for the fun of it - and that it was.

A few easy miles to get back in the swing of things after 9 days of resting the legs with some cycling, lifting and light stretching.  This run started my assault on Boston 2014 - let the adventure begin!

Easy run around Lake Overstreet with the puppy dog.  Long day tomorrow of driving to and from Jax for the all day Region Meet.  Trav's only competition in the 1600 is really himself - 4x8 should win, and he should easily be top 4 in the 800 to qualify through to State - hes freaking a bit because he thinks he is less heat acclimated than the guys 6-8 seconds behind him in the 1600 - supposed to be low 80s at race time.  Of course, he has zero basis for his fears... I'm gonna build him one of those fancy ice vests that the pros use these days - yah, thats the ticket.

Nice cool down for a couple days here - easy run around the Lake Jackson loop.  Nothing yesterday other than spikes in the hear trate during Travis' races.  He anchored the Region Champion 4x800 relay, finished 2nd in the 1600 with 4:30 and took 3rd in the 800 with 2:01.  Accomplished the main goals of qualifying through to State in those events and helping the team win the Region title - good day.

A few miles on the trails to continue ramping back up.

Nice gathering of folks in support of Boston this evening.  We ran "5.2 at 5 for Boston" to mimic finishing the marathon for those who got turned away at 21 miles on Monday due to the attack at the finish line.  The organizers first announced the run on Tuesday expecting 40-50 people... by Thurs, they had to change the venue and add sherif's dept and city permits and liability insurance and porta potties and course marshals because the facebook event page had grown to 500.  By this morning it was over 1,000 - it ended up with just over 1,000 running/walking, and over $12,000 raised to send to the Boston Red Cross.  Felt good to do something - we had 4 local Boston finishers at the start line and several Marines and ROTC kids.  I kept it between 7:30 and 7:45 pace fairly comfortably on a rather warm humid evening.

Blog post by the organizer 

Lake Jackson loop after work

Mile warmup then 8x two minutes on and one minute off at about 5k pace (6:45 for me right now). Finished with another mile cooldown.

Nice run on the trails after work - spent the whole time going over and over how Travis should race tomorrow - sheesh, I think I'm more nervous than he is.  4x800 at 1:45, 1600 at 6:57 and 800 at 7:48 - supposedly will be a link to live stream posted at flrunners.com.  Gonna go try to sleep a while now.

Ran an easy 1.5 with the doggie and then another easy 4 on my own.  Three days off was too many, but the State Meet in Jax was awesome and the weekend was spent basking in the glow.

Our girls went in as slight favorites for the title and they proceeded to totally dominate with 4 gold medals, a silver, three bronzes and a couple other top 6 finishes.  Our squad of ten girls accumulated 76 points to win by 23 - an impressive effort,

Travis started the day as anchor of the 4x800 at about 1:45 in the afternoon.  The guys had an outside shot at top 3 in the relay, but for the first time in coach's 20 years, the baton was dropped in a 4x8! Our second to third leg transition did not occur successfully, and we went from 4th to 8th in an instant.  The freshman third leg rallied quickly, but blew up in the last 100 to hand off to Travis in 6th, 40 meters out of 5th and 60 meters out of 4th.  Trav reeled in one and was closing fast on 4th, but the team got 5th.  His 1600 early in the evening session went much much better.  As expected, it was a very strategic race with all the guys ending up a few seconds off their PRs.  Trav was never far out of the lead running 66, 72, 69, 61.  With the 72/69 in the middle, we knew it was setting up perfectly for Trav's kick - indeed he went 61 and came off the final turn in 4th right in line with the top 3, but a couple team mates from Holy Trinity in Melbourne battled each other down the line to finish a couple seconds ahead.  Trav went 4:28.39 for the bronze medal and hasn't stopped smiling since.  Well, he didn't smile during the last 200 meters of the 800 he had to run 40 minutes after the 1600... he stayed in the mix through 600 but then was totally done and went 2:10.

The meet was at UNF, and his coach for next year complimented him on his 1600 - made him feel purty good.