Work has been a bit more challenging, with some new clients coming onboard I've been stretched a bit to find good caregivers to take care of everyone who needs help. Honestly, it's been "more challenging" like two customers in a row asking for no pickles on their mcdonald's cheeseburgers, I'm just not always the most eager to tackle change. Or my other analogy was that answering the latest client requests has been as demanding to me as life for the Old-time Mainer on his front porch who has two out-of-towners stop and ask him for directions in the same week. I can't really be too put out about it; it means Marathon Home Care is growing, and that's something we want.
I had a great run to kick off the month on Thursday, the first. I ran out to the snowman-shaped neighborhood on Lord's Hill in Wenham and ran 3x the neighborhood loop with two minute recoveries in between. The loop starts with a big climb (in either direction) and includes some good up and down running throughout. I had run 2x the neighborhood once in January and the loops each took me right around 12 minutes, so I was hoping to add one more in this time without slowing down. I ended up running the first and third loops in reverse direction, partly to make it more interesting and partly because there is a Strava segment up the first big hill that I wanted to grab. I ran 11:55, then 11:58 the normal direction, then 11:55 again on the last one and ran home feeling good like I should after a tempo-type workout. (I ended up missing the hill segment by a couple seconds, but snatched it this Tuesday instead. It is a TOUGH hill to run up fast, and the old segment was run at 5:40 - something pace, so I have been going into oxygen debt immediately, like Gimli trying to keep up with Aragorn and Legolas)
On the cooldown home, I was letting my mind wander a bit to work stuff and warmer weather races as I turned into my neighborhood. I saw my 70-year-old neighbor Mary, out in her apron but no coat, and as I approached her, she reached down with bare hands into the snow and came up firing at me with a snowball. It was such a great tension breaker I was practically laughing when I got home. (Notably, Mary is the mother of five boys, one of whom ran sub-4 in the mile after college, and now has 20 grandkids and her first great-grandchild as of a month or so ago, not that I stop and talk to her much...) 😉
Friday, I met Alex Vlahos at his office in Beverly at lunch and ran almost seven miles with him at 7:38 pace. It was snowy and icy on the sidewalks so we stuck to quieter roads than normal.
Saturday, it was pretty cold again, and I bundled up for an out and back 10 miles by the Beverly Airport at 6:41 pace.
Sunday, Jose Ortiz met me in Ipswich right after church and I joined him for fifteen miles with alternations of 3 minutes on, 2 minutes off for the last three miles. The first twelve passed quickly in spite of the freezing rain, as we got to catch up. It was the first time I had seen Jose in a few years, and we have had some close battles with each other on the roads at Grand Prix events and the Yankee Homecoming 10-mile.
When we got ready for the first "three minutes on" I had in mind 5:40-pace or maybe 5:30 if we were feeling good. Jose had said they were half-marathon to marathon pace, and he is shooting for 2:30's at Boston and probably 1:11-1:13 at New Bedford before that. I knew it would be a stretch for me, but the intervals weren't that long, so I thought I'd be ok.
To my surprise, on the first one, I found I just could not hang with Jose. I was a good 5 seconds back after a minute and a half of running. I probably finished all four pick-ups at least ten seconds in arrears of him. I wasn't sure if I was just tired from the twelve miles, or not in as good shape as I thought I was, or getting sick, or what.
But when I finally caught up to Jose afterwards, I found out what was wrong: he was trying to average 5:30-5:40 over the entire time, including the two minutes off, so he was running the three minutes on at 5:00-5:10 pace. So I was ok with being dropped at that pace.
With the 15 miles with Jose, I wound up with 66 for the week, my highest mileage week since just after the Patriots won their fourth superbowl against the seahawks on the malcolm butler interception.
Monday, I woke up with a bit of a cold and thought I'd be beat up from the run with Jose the day before, but felt surprisingly good at the start of my run. At about three miles, I felt like death, and struggled until about 5, and then was ok at a slower pace, finishing up 9 miles.
Tuesday, I went out and ran the snowman again, relaxed and still recovering from the week before - 8 miles at 7:11-pace.
Yesterday, I had planned to run before it snowed, but a morning meeting ran over by an hour, so it had already started snowing when I got out at noon. I fell once early on some ice that was under a dusting of new snow, but then as the snow got deeper, it was easier to stick in on the unplowed roads and untreated sidewalks. Another 8 miles at 7:19-pace.
Still haven't shaken this cold, it's gone from a sore throat/Superbowl loss hangover to a cough/nasally drip, but it hasn't kept me completely doan and out, so I'll try to keep running through it with a little longer run today (maybe ten or eleven when the ice melts) and back to 6-8 tomorrow before heading to Bradford on Saturday with Heather for the Valentine 5-mile/6k race.
I'm looking forward to having an actual race to write about soon!
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