Week ending 02-22-09

Well, another week in the bag and another 70+ miles. I hit 75 for the week despite coming down with a lousy head-cold. At least this was nothing like the flu I had last month where I was laid up for a week. I just felt miserable this week and was hacking and coughing a lot. I think the best I felt was while out running when my head would clear.

My ankle, Achilles and hamstring on the left leg was bothering me all week and had me a little nervous heading into the 10 mile grand prix race. I seem to be no worse for the wear after the race, but I’ll take a couple of easy days this week.

The running was mostly good this week and we even had a rare run with Andy King at Dan’s work, which is always good to break up the monotony of running with Dan (just kidding, Dan is fun to run with). I did some harder running on the treadmill this week while doing my lunch runs at work. Instead of increasing the pace every two minutes I upped it every minute and on Thursday and Friday ran the last mile at (and slightly below) six minute pace. That gave me some hope heading into the ten mile.

The race itself went well, see the account below, with a sub 60 effort. That was with 20 seconds of what I ran last year in July at Newburyport. I’ll take a sub-60 this early in the year. If I can stay healthy maybe I’ll even get into the top 10 at a Grand Prix race (I think that my best shot will be the 12 Km in May).

Next up: This weekend will be the Hawley Kiln snowshoe race, my last tune-up before the snowshoe nationals in Oregon!
The starting line of the 5,000 at the old BU armory circa 1984. I'm third from the left with teammate Tom Chamberas behind me. Second from the right is Dennis Simoniatis (he is one of the top 45+ runners in the country).