Matthew Jordan
| Programming, Running, and ThingsMonday (Off…?)
Ever since I moved to Alabama, I’ve wanted to hike the Walls of Jericho. Somewhere near Scottsboro there’s a sign for it (only 20 miles away!), and every time I’ve driven by it I’ve thought to myself, “I should do that.” A few friends warned me that the hike back up is a bit “strenuous”, but that if you were in okay shape, it was doable.
And hey, I’m training for a marathon. I’m in okay shape, right?
Katie let me know that there was a guided hike on Monday, which provided the perfect excuse to finally go and experience the Walls. Yes, it meant taking a day off of work, and I’d need to juggle my runs accordingly. Looking at my schedule, I figured I’d skip my usual crosstraining (hiking is crosstraining, right?) and move that from Wednesday to Monday. That would mean at least 8 straight days of running. Yikes.
Whatever, you’re only 36 once.
The hike was totally worth it. The pictures don’t really do it justice.
While it would have been great to swim in the pool at the bottom of the walls, being on a guided hike with a large group made me feel a bit awkward. Plus, nobody else was doing it, and I didn’t really pack anything for that. Eating lunch on the cliff overlooking the pool was good enough.
Once I’d had lunch, it was back up. And up. And up. I left the guided group in the dust and power hiked it out, and it was still two hours of constant climbing. My iPhone says I did 7.7-ish miles of hiking, and climbed 109 flights of stairs. It certainly felt like it. My right knee was a bit sore afterwards, in that oh so vague “complaining” sense. This wouldn’t bother me, but this was supposed to be my “off” day. Hopefully everything holds together. We’ll see how the substance runs go.
Tuesday (6x800m speed work)
While I was a bit sore from the hike, this ended up being no big deal muscle/joint wise. Frustratingly, my warm up lap was screwed up. I have my workout set up to let me do a 1.5 mile warm up/cool down, triggered by lap button presses. Somehow, I had set this one up wrong, and it immediately clicked over into the speed interval at mile 1, causing me to have to do the first 800m/400R on a hill and not on a track. Luckily, I think as the distance has gone up I’ve actually found it a little bit easier to do the speed intervals. I think it comes from not having to ratchet the effort up and down quite so often. Even so, the laps were still pretty brutal, the last two in particular. I’m not sure if I’ll feel the same way on the 5x1000m runs in Orlando next week. By the end of the substance run, my knee was a bit sore, but not twinging.
I’ll call that a victory.
Wednesday (6 mile slow)
Took this one extra slow, given that my knee was still a bit sore. Had no problems, and it was a nice, slow, pleasent run. Later in the afternoon, I still had no knee soreness, so things seemed to be healing up just fine.
Thursday (6 mile tempo)
The run I was fearing, as intensity + longer distance is usually my recipe for disaster. Knee was fine, although it felt “present”. I’m not sure how else to describe it - it isn’t sore, it isn’t painful, I can just feel its existance more than usual. As normal, tempo runs feel like the hardest run in the set, given how tired my legs are. Usually, I have my crosstraining day off in between to “freshen up” for this run; even missing it, I finished just fine. As I was starting my last tempo mile, I wondered if right now, I could run another three miles. I get to find out next week when I bump up to an 8 mile tempo run.
Friday (5 mile slow)
A nice easy loop around downtown, run at roughly a 9:41 min/mile pace. Easy peasy.
Saturday (6 mile slow)
Another nice easy loop around downtown. I was particularly proud of this because I ran it slow, giving my legs extra rest. Finished it up at 10:03 min/mile. I never thought I’d be proud at holding myself at roughly a 10:00 min/mile pace, but sometimes controlling yourself is harder than just simply letting loose.
Sometimes, it’s a lot harder.
Sunday (12 mile long)
As this would be my last 12 mile long before AstriCon - which has traditionally been the death of training (more on that in the next post) - I was anxious to get in a solid long run. Plus, my mileage was going to go up next week with an 8 mile tempo run and 15 mile long, and having a strong long run to finish off the week would give me a nice mental boost.
Unfortunately, I hadn’t gone more than maybe two or three minutes before I encountered a house on fire.
Seriously.
Okay, so not a big fire, but a fire nonetheless. I mean, it’s 6:15 AM in the morning, there’s smoke coming from the porch, and actual flames. (Ironically, as I approached the house, I smelled the classic smell of burning wood and thought to myself, “wow, that’s nostalgic”, only to realize that the wood was their house.)
Holy flirking shnit.
I knocked on their door; no answer. Pounded, shouted, nothing. Not surprising, really. Who wants to answer their door at 6:15 to a guy wearing bright clothes and super-short shorts?
Ran around the house, looking for a hose. None found.
Here then, we have a moral dilemma. I have water on me, about 18 ounces. I need that water. I’ve got 12 miles to go, it’s the South, and it’s unseasonably warm. There’s no water fountains along my route, no public places to refill.
I hesitated.
With an internal sigh, I dumped half of each bottle onto the fire, hoping it would put it out. I got maybe a quarter of the fire to go out, but then the wind picked up and it flared to life again. Feeling the remainder of the water in my bottles, I decided that:
- Dumping the rest of the water on the fire wouldn’t solve the problem.
- I could theoretically do 12 miles on half the water I usually bring.
Time to call in the professionals. It felt weird to try and call the fire department for a fire that was technically less than 1 ft x 1 ft, but I was running out of options. Alas, there wasn’t a non-emergency number for the fire department (and, really, is any structure fire an emergency? Presumably yes), so 911 it was.
It was a very awkward 911 call.
“What is your emergency?”
“Well, it’s not really an emergency, but there is a house on fire.”
“Sir, are you in the house?”
“It’s not my house, I was running by and saw it.”
“Are there any occupants trapped?”
“Well, I can walk around the fire and pound on the door, so I don’t think so. But they aren’t answering their door either.”
“…”
Anywho, the fire department showed up, put the fire out in 10 seconds, and thanked me for my service. I waved, and took back off out of my neighboorhood on my course.
15 minutes behind.
This is a problem, as I tell Katie how long I think I’m going to be out and about when I’m doing my long runs so she doesn’t worry. I always give myself a good 30 minutes of padding in case I have to walk some, and I’d just eaten 15 minutes into that. If for whatever reason I had to slow down considerably, I’d be bumping pretty close into my time limit.
Don’t. Panic. The. Wife.
Even so, I was good so long as I could keep myself at my 9:20 min/mile pace. As I ran, things felt… good. I had run 6 days in a row, and while my legs were sore, after the first mile things just clicked into place and I bumped along. After the first three or four miles it was hard to keep myself from running too fast. No knee soreness, other than the usual “you’re running on me for 12 miles” kinds of soreness that one can expect.
I finished up with a solid 9:22 min/mile and got home in plenty of time. Yay.
Totals
Distance: 44.53 miles
Time: 7:01:06
Calories: 6305
Fires: 1