Week 6: on the rebound

Must kick the last of the cold symptoms this week. Must must must.

(Monday, 11 February)
Mannion asked me and Erin out for drinks for the wine club, so I did the run by my lonesome a little early. I felt pretty bad, but not like I was going to drop dead. Basically, my lungs are not as irritated as they have been, and my nose is not as out of control, but every once in a while I just start hackin' it up. I was also running really slowly. I wonder how much of this has to do with the heat - I felt pretty good last night as I recall. We'll see in the morning I suppose.

Oh, and then I got drunk and had to give office hours. Just great.

(Tuesday, 12 February)
No more getting my drink on. Actually, I can't really blame this bad workout on that. I can maybe blame it on only sleeping 6.5 hours. But mostly I can continue to blame it on the fact that it feels like there's a moderate sized Chewbacca trying to crawl out of my lungs and is only making it to mid-chest. I was wheezing like the English Patient today. We ran long long way to Lacy (about 29 minutes) and then did 20 minutes tempo which felt like forever, but shouldn't have as I was running slow, maybe 7.05 pace overall. We probably started faster than that and then slowed down though. I felt like I was going to throw up afterwards. Just really, really struggling and trying to keep everything together. Yuck.

(Wednesday, 13 February)
Interhovse track. Ran the 1500 with Nathan, which was super fun. Splits were pretty even for 5.35, which felt pretty easy. 87-92-89-65. We even passed big Ben in there which caused me a great deal of satisfaction. Nathan is looking strong! I hope he comes to track now. I've never seen him run so fast. I also did the 800 for the first time in 2 years and broke my only-time-ever (2.48 soph year at Whittier) with a 2.42 (82/80). I passed some gals in the last 200m or so, so it made for good theater. Ran a very slow 400 (4x4) but I have no idea how fast I ran. My shoulder hurt afterwards because of all the arm pumping.

(Thursday, 14 February)
Ran easy crazy tree, although I think I puzzled everyone by first overshooting the crazy tree, and then going to the tree and announcing that I no longer thought it was "crazy". Seriously, I remember a tree with a huge frickin hole in it, and this just looked like a normal tree. I wonder if something is different. Calves sore.

(Friday, 15 February)
Prerace from Wilson. My calves are so sore I can barely walk if I sit down for too long. Not good. Ran in the AM for maximum recovery time.

(Saturday, 16 February) PP All-Comer's
Ran a pitiful 3k with some splits 1.41! for 12.00. I am never, ever going to run 20 if I can't run a decent 3k at that pace. This was a real heartbreaker. I didn't even feel that bad, I just couldn't keep the pace up. Super freaking depressing. Chris did cheer me up a bit on my warmup for the 800 though, so that made things feel not so bad. Ran 81/77 for a PR (2.38.55) in the 800. Even won my heat, which I think was not so popular with some of the junior members of the team. They'll live though. I wonder if I could have run it faster overall with non-negative splits. I don't know how I feel about the whole "run positive splits in the 800" mentality.

(Sunday, 17 February)
Off, busy today. Went out to Pacific Palisades and then had the wine tasting event at Mannion's. Everyone seemed to have a good time, I think about 100 people showed up. I was really tired afterwards though. Lots of standing around on my feet. I'm looking forward to a long run tomorrow at some point.