A little over 8 miles in an hour out in Valley Forge. Very easy, very relaxed. ------------------------------- This fine gentleman asked me a great question about my mileage history and I consider it worth posting a response here. First, in case you haven't noticed, I majored in German in college; I went to an engineering school where men used to learn how to build brilliant and architecturally stunning Vauban forts with immaculate angles and pointy glacis designed to hit all dead space and cover every angle of assault with a preponderance of massed cannon. All things Vauban hearken to a time when the business of blowing people's heads off was a lovely art form--grapeshot, then brains, all at a symmetric, 45 degree angle to a harpsichord soundtrack played by some guy with a painted face wearing pantaloons and a powdered wig. This school also taught bearded men looking like extras off the set of Gods and Generals how to calculate the parabolic trajectory of rifled cannon to the nearest foot, so that brother could kill more brothers in the American precursor to the 'war to end all wars.' So when I went there, I avoided math at all costs. As you can tell, I'm obviously not a numbers guy and in order to find my mileage on this blog, you have to wade through poetic swamps full of rotting memories; you have to cross canals with Mexicans on bikes and dusty paupers at 11pm, just to find a 12 miler here and an 8 miler there. Just throwing these mile numbers into your bag as you slog--knee-deep--across the literary sewer, makes for Sisyphean work; I gave up about 3 days into it. So it's hard to find out what the hell I've done. I do know that my recent 120 mile week was the highest one-week mileage recorded to date in my life. I also know that a week before last, I ran a then-record 110 miles. So this is 2 consecutive weeks above 100 miles--also a record. I've done things like increasing numbers of quarters and even introduced a progression 20 miler into the mix--all this since Napa. I conclude therefore, that I am doing more volume than I've ever done. Or, put differently: I'm training. Many of my postings last year describe 'threshold' workouts running up and down an 11 mile mountain loop called Rushmore and doing 6:30 type stuff, but few describe lengthy runs and none describe smart racing. However, I did start doing Tuesday interval workouts with the Westchester Track Club last summer and my PR's started dropping after those. I'm hoping that my long weeks combined with my track workouts and a few mid-week progression runs will be enough to knock the Skirack team's gloves down. Now, throw in a recovery week and a 110 with MP combo, then finish with a 120 haymaker and send that 'elite' team to the floor with its crooked Plantagenet teeth knocked out from its swollen head. After the Vermont City Marathon, I'll begin a real workout schedule similar to what I put together between these marathons sticking to principles and probably similar to what my adept running mentor has developed. I enjoy the non-mathematical approach, not using boingogobbledeegook charts, and not quoting coaches, sages, mystics, seers, and Christ-like, running eidola as if they were John the Evangelist in his famous chapter 3, verse 16.* --------------------------- The Benefits of Death Quarters? I am disclosing for the first time here that I am trying out for a corporate Penn Relays team. I'd most likely run the 1600m leg of the distance medley. To make the 'A' squad, I need to bust out probably a sub 4:45, 1600. The Penn Relays is the Friday before my daughter's First Communion; my parents are coming out for that and would get to take my daughter to see me run--if I make the team. We have a time trial to determine the teams this Thursday or Friday. No pressure, right? ---------------------------- *I wanted to put this as a footnote. I shall now go off some more on the massed majority of running literature as well as the wizened sages who seek your money from selling the obvious as they steer their colored chaises across the fruited plain--from expo to expo. I shall also continue to take aim at the formulaic approach to running. Imagination and Herculean perseverance, that's all it takes. Most people just give up--tucked neatly underneath a warm blanket of pathetic, bullshit excuses--and fall asleep to a mediocre, fattening life of never believing in themselves; they look at the elites and wave them off as genetic superhumans. They can't fathom repeats on a track or the fact that maybe those repeats will actually get easier--the body will adapt, performance will come. Walking with head down and hands on hips will migrate to a jog that gives way to a faster recovery and a 64 second-400. It's not impossible and it doesn't cost money; it takes the slow drip of sweat over years--falling on the hardened ground of endless difficult workouts and boring miles--to break up the soil and get water to the tiny seeds of improvement. Seeds then germinate under the dreamy sun and blossom into measured progress. Suddenly, you realize that you can run fast and before you know it, you are doing the impossible. Ok, maybe you need a smidgen of the basics as well. The basics have been discussed ad nauseum and were developed by some of the real sages in our sport(Lydiard/Bowerman to name a few) a long time ago. But there ain't much there people--base, hills, speed. Everything else is gristle sold for you to gnaw on at the expos and on the web and in the bookstores by people needing to sustain a living off the caveman mechanics of putting one foot in front of the other. Run, run, run. Shut up, and fucking run.