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December 18, 2005
Week No. 10
REASON NO. 17 FOR RUNNING A MARATHON
Running a marathon will give me the opportunity to beat my brother in the longest and most difficult race we have run together.
My brother and I have been racing against each other for about three years. He is strictly a runner, whereas I have branched off into doing triathlons as well as running races. Thus far, the score is 3 wins for myself, and two wins for my brother. Our most recent race was the Bidwell Classic ½ Marathon in Bidwell Park last March. I was able to beat “The runner� by an embarrassing 4 minutes (see results here).
This, of course gave me lots of opportunities (virtually every family get-together) to extol the virtues of triathlons, and preach to Dave how swimming and biking makes you a faster runner.
This was a long, long week. It was the usual pre-Christmas craziness, then throw in a bunch of training, and the last ravages of a nasty cold, and by Friday I was beat!!
Tuesday was a frosty 3-mile run before taking my son to basketball tryouts at 6:30 AM. I didn’t get home until late due to our Town Council meeting, then I was up at 3:30 AM on Wednesday, to get in a 7 mile run before basketball.
Thursday was gym workout, with a 3 mile run on the treadmill. Friday was cross training, with a pool workout. I did 200 yards to warm up, then five 100 yard sprints, trying to hold my time at under 2 minutes/hundred. I averaged about 2 minutes, 5 seconds per 100. I then did a couple of 50-yard sprints, with my fastest time ever of 47 seconds. This is glacier speed compared to real swimmers, but at least I am still improving, even with my reduced level of swimming during the off-season. After my son got out of school, we managed to get an hour or so of tennis in before it got dark. My son’s tennis skills have just exploded this year, and I am trying to keep him encouraged.
Saturday was a rest day, in anticipation of my long run on Sunday. Or, was supposed to be a rest day. After a long day of eating (we had our pre-Christmas family get together), my son wanted to play tennis, but it was wet and rainy. So we (Ryan and his 13 year old cousin) went to the gym to play racquetball. Fit-one was closed for a private party, so we went to North Valley Athletic Club. What an awesome place!! We were not members, but that was no big deal to them. We did not have rackets for the kids, they had equipment there for rent. We played probably an hour of racquetball, and then went to basketball court. We met up with another family there, and played a couple of incredible 3 on 3 basketball games with them. By 8:00 PM, we were pretty well exhausted, did just a little shopping at the mall, then a Jamba juice for the ride home.
Sunday was my long run – due to the rain I opted for the treadmill at In Motion Fitness. The treadmill will only program up to 9 miles, so it broke it into a 9 mile and a 7 mile run, with just a minute or two of walking in between. I kept a pretty even pace of 9.8 minutes/mile, with just a couple of walking breaks towards the end. I actually took a grocery bag of stuff with me to the treadmill – 30 ounces of water, 28 ounces of Accelerade, 3 GU’s, 1 Powerbar, and some Kleenex. I’m sure people thought for sure that I was crazy – but all the “fuel� worked really well. Total running time was 2 hours, 45 minutes to cover about 16.5 miles (including warm-up/warm-down).
I’m not going to try to kid anyone – 16 miles is a long ways, especially on a treadmill. By the end, my knees were complaining a little, as were my hips – but I finished the run, and held my goal of 10-minute miles. This was the longest run I have ever completed in my life – so I guess it is understandable that some of the body parts would complain just a little bit.
I saw Marty and Dan there at the gym – they were gearing up for a 12 mile run. They are both training for the Napa Valley Marathon as well. It will be great to have some local folks running with us, and someone to cheer us on the last couple of miles.
I met up with my family a little later and went to Applebee’s for lunch – man, food never tasted so good. Had a big bowl of French Onion soup, and a huge salad with chicken – um,,, yummy!!!!
Posted by Dennis at December 18, 2005 02:27 PM