Workout 1. = 84 minutes at VF. Ran the first 40 with a group of work runners at an 8:00 pace then said goodbye and did the next 44 minutes alone along the Betzwood. 1 mile sample was 7:14 pace. I plan to do 30 minutes tonight for a total amount of run time = 1:54 or what I expect to be about 15 miles. (5 at 8:00, probably a little shy of 6 on my own, a little more than 4 tonight) Workout 2 = 33 minutes dread. 4.6 miles. Lets call it 15 for the day. 400 crunches including 20 Devil Crunches. I'm been preaching them on her blog so I needed to do the things. They are misery. They are named after the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment. My old unit (I was in 2-504), the Devil's Brigade. Named accordingly because of a captured Kraut diary across the front lines that noted that the paratroopers scared the scheisse out of him...he called them "Devils in Baggy Pants." (WW2 paratroopers wore jump smocks with a million pockets to shove mandatory essentials like Gammon bombs, trench knives, grenades, and ammo for the Tommy gun. ) Those guys were bad asses. However, the Colonel who eventually succeded in leading this fine Brigade in the late 1990s, COL Petraeus was nothing but a 100 pounds of pure sycophant. He had stars in his eyes and all us junior officers, NCOs and privates were nothing but tools and mortar to be spaded, stacked, abused, and piled so that his West Point, Princeton-PHD, Stepford wife-marrying, self-serving ass could climb the wall up to the stars where the other donkeys brayed. This man will remain with me till the end of my days as the perfect example of micromangement and what not to do. Footnote: COL Petraeus climbed that wall. He's a 3 star general now and the President and Rummy handpicked him to form the new Iraqi army. He was on the cover of Newsweek. He made it! But he's got a collapsed lung because he was in the lead observing a trench-clearing exercise and got in the way of a SAW gunner with an itchy trigger finger. Keep leading from the front Dave; you invented the Devil Crunch and I think about you when I can't feel my abs anymore. --------------------------- The plan. Here's the barrel of the gun that I'm looking down for the week. Funny how the later in the day and the longer the barrel, the more you sweat as the day and the week passes. If you have some form of guilt complex in your head such as myself, you get anxiety attacks and withdrawals if you fall off the plan which is why I hate plans. But 100+ mile weeks won't come without them. We choose a hobby and passion for escape and therapy and then we ring ourselves with high walls that require constant maintenance always fearing the growing campfires of the Visigoth's of mortality amassing to lay the enevitable siege with the tragic outcome. Monday = 15 miles easy. Doubles Tuesday = 15 miles with a track workout = 5 x 800 on the Betzwood trail at 5k pace (2:30-2:34) with 1 min recovery. Wed = 15 miles, something like 6, and 9 Thurs = 15 miles (try singles if I can wake up on time and try 4 miles in the middle of the run at MP) Friday = flight out to San Fran. Bay Area..home. Maybe do 6 miles on my tread before we leave. Saturday = 20 miles, something like 12 and 8. Sunday = xmas = a 5 mile race near my house...maybe I'll do it. If yes, 5 race, 9 easy. = 100 miles. ------------------- The workout today. The VF Gestapo were patrolling the parking lot today which is a good thing. The bad thing is that the ranger scowled at me as I reached into my car to get my bag. All runners, thieves, and consensual car sex partners are now equally under the Masonic eye of the Great Seal. The tin whistle-playing kid with the smelly pre-pubescent armpits and the tricorn hat gets a pass. I ran with work folks; they comprise a nice group of pretty much goofy runners with varying degrees of ability. I just kept my mouth shut, played caboose and then charged up the hills sprinting towards the Brad Hudson apparition behind the Muhlenberg Brigade reconstructed hut. I'd come to a stop and wait for them and repeated this at the other hill we encountered. I'm not one of those jog-in-place people; when waiting at lights or for friends, I just stop running and stand there. Jogging in place strikes me as extraneous, nervous energy to be completed in front of cars or others to appear as though you are doing everything humanely possible to keep up appearances despite unfortunate circumstances out of your control. I found this piece of shit in one of my moving boxes. I last wore it for some idiotic reason while I ran a race I never should have run -- the Jay Mountain Marathon. I got drunk the night before it; I watched Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, and I was warned by my friend Ken that I'd get hurt running it. I did. I was in 3rd place and cracked my knee on a rock in the Tarzan section of the race -- running through a streambed. I ended up taking 7th and was like William Holden's character when he escapes from the prison camp in Bridge on the River Kwai. I had my shirt wrapped around my head swatting non-existent flies and was mumbling to myself at the finish line. Some kid jumped in front of me out of nowhere and asked me for my autograph and I signed my name as a flat EKG line. So I found it again today. It was last on as I commando-crawled across a rope in some Vermont river; it was malfunctioning and telling me that I was on mile 893 of my Walter Middy adventure. I let it dry for a year and when I turned it on today, it told me it had 5 hours of battery life left --perfect for my run today. After all, I go by a special rule of electronic broken things. Time heals. If you alllow enough time to pass between turning on broken electronic things, they will fix themselves. So I had the 10lb hunk of crap on my wrist at VF. I turned it on. It acquired one satellite and then told me I had 4 hours, 3 hours, 2, 1, DEAD. I threw it in my fugly running pants and it clanked along as dead weight banging against my safely-secured truck key playing a statacco symphony of stupidity.