Riding with the Shen Train - choo choo!

Here we go with the weekend update:

First, pretty dismal showing by the United States in the World Championships. Really didn’t win too terribly much, but salvaged some gold at the end by great performances by LaShawn Merritt and the 4X400 men’s relay team. U.S. won 10 gold medals, a steady decrease from their last couple appearances in the World Track and Field Championships, so need to step it up moving forward! Kara Goucher finished 10^th in the women’s marathon, quite the disappointing performance seeing she should have easily medaled. She battled hot conditions and had problems with fluid retention during the middle part of the race which pretty much killed her in the end. Sadly, this will be her last race for a while, as she is taking a break to concentrate on family. We’ll miss you Kara! On the men’s marathon side, Dan Browne had the top U.S. time of 2:16:49, which was good for 24^th place. Very disappointing effort, as it shows how far behind U.S. Marathoning is behind other countries in the world. And if your name is not Ryan Hall, Dathan Ritzenhein, or Meb Keflezighi, there aren’t too many competitive marathoners in the country that are going to make an aggressive push at a marathon title. Hopefully, Hall can bring home a NYC Marathon crown and salvage some pride for the Americans – we shall see!

Weekend ended up flying by as usual, and managed to get in some solid runs. Friday, Crystal and I decided to get in our Saturday run early and flip flop our day off since Saturday was pretty jam packed for me. Weather was overcast and cool, prob in the low 70’s – absolutely perfect for running. In fact, it started to rain at one point but only spitting rain which was fine towards the later part of the run. Wanted to go slow, told Crystal that since I was tired from the aggressive tempo the night before. Started out slow, quickly got into a good groove and first few miles were sort of groggy but picked up quickly. Found ourselves having to slow down a little, but legs were ok. Groin still sore, but loosened up my mid-run. So we’re headed towards the university, and we see various runners in our path since it was really nice outside – about 0.12 miles from our turn around, we spot a girl runner with her boyfriend biking next to her presumably as her pacer. Crystal is pretty territorial about her bike path, so as we make the turn around (at least a quarter mile behind now), Crystal starts licking her chops and pretty much declares we are going to pick them off. So goodbye aspirations of a nice, slow run, all of a sudden we are going ludicrous speed, albeit on a downhill and felt pretty good. We catch up to them, just blaze past them, our point was made (don’t motivate Crystal or she will smoke you), and we finally eased up when we forked back to the main part of the trail. Last couple miles, cruised through, finished with no problems. Total mileage: 10 miles – splits were 8:27, 7:58, 7:55, 7:57, 8:03, 7:43, 7:15, 7:50, 7:36, 7:30.

Hung out with Pat and Crystal afterwards, Shane came over so we made it a fun euchre night. Saturday morning, golf tourney, played with some friends over at a local golf course – nothing special to note, just had a good time with good company with absolutely perfect weather! Didn’t stay long enough to see if we won anything, in fact all our teams bailed so who knows how we did overall?! Ran some errands, ended up going to a wedding with my friend Jessica in Soulard (south St. Louis) – perfect weather, just had a great evening with a lot of fun people. Stayed out a bit too late, and 5:55 a.m. came pretty fast for our Sunday long run. Shane picked me up, we met up with Crystal and trotted over to the bike trails and off we went! Weather was super cool (high 50’s), but sun was starting to come out so warmed up just fine. First 3 miles, my God I was cramping so bad I was wondering if I could even finish half of this run!! We were going pretty slow, and I was not feeling good at all but motored on. Right before the big hill on Meridian, finally started to feel good and then all of a sudden was in a groove. Pace felt good, good conversation, perfect conditions to run, next thing you know we are at the 10 mile turnaround having ran the last 7 miles uphill so you can only imagine our mindsets knowing we had almost 7 miles of downhill coming up. Those miles FLEW by, we passed a lot of runners on the trail, saw bikers, legs were feeling pretty good. Sun was coming out but most of the trail was shaded so was fine – breeze was a little stagnant coming home, so made the temps rise a little but was still tolerable. We make it to mile 17, last 3 miles were uphill so tried to get mentally prepared for that. Legs felt pretty good at this point, and we pretty much nailed those miles having to slow down at various points. BTW, saw a ridiculous amount of wildlife on this run – turkeys, deer, rabbits, cats, dogs, squirrels, birds - was like a freaking nature channel run! Shane had planned on getting in 3:10 on this run, and we were going to easily hit 20 miles in less than 3 hours so we decided to keep going since all of us felt pretty good. Hit a flat part of the trail (past our starting point), felt fine but at the turnaround (roughly 0.8 miles out), groin started to get really tight and could feel the general fatigue of running for over 3 hours at this point. Focused on getting into a zone, was fine – Crystal and Shane started to pick it up towards the end (wtf?), so decided I was not going to get dusted behind and got going myself. Got up to marathon pace, then faster, then I think we were hitting 6:50 pace at one point but still felt great. Did a little extra to round off the mileage, felt amazingly good and was on cloud 9 after that performance. Total mileage: 22 miles – splits were 9:03, 8:44, 8:42, 8:35, 8:54, 8:48, 8:44, 8:45, 8:34, 8:46, 8:51, 8:39, 8:41, 8:42, 8:37, 9:05, 8:29, 8:50, 9:04, 8:46, 8:27, 7:49.

Stretched for a decent amount, then had a ridiculous feast of food at St. Louis Bread Company with Pat and Crystal afterwards, ate outside and was enjoying the beautiful day. Notes on the long run – we used Gatorade Endurance throughout the run, which is the formula that will be used in the Chicago Marathon. The sodium content is higher in this type of Gatorade, which helps with fluid retention. Had no problems with it, tasted good and no cramping issues later. Also, used GU Roctane, which has more caffeine in it. Actually felt pretty energized after using it, and think I figured out my GU strategy for the marathon (every 1:15). I didn’t eat a very good breakfast in the morning (banana and water), so was happy to have gotten through without hitting the wall or any problems whatsoever. Was very pleased at the week’s running – hit 57 miles, had a career long training run (not counting marathons, of course), and hit a good tempo run as well so was absolutely perfect! This week is an off week, time to rest a little, but amazingly I feel pretty good despite the last 2 heavy weeks! Groin is still tight, left knee is sore but hey I ran 22 miles yesterday! Tonight is easy 4 with Crystal, should be pretty much an easy trot so foresee no problems.

Golf Scramble Team

Jess and I

Shane getting ready for the ridiculous long run