And we're back!

Holy absence Batman! Sorry to all (both) of my fans for my extended soujourn. I know that you were very concerned, most likely asking yourself questions like "Where's Dan?" or "What running blog will I read now?". Well, you can rest easy knowing that we are back online. And what did you miss? Well, lots of running - check out the updated charts! If my weeks 4 through 6 seem skimpy, it's because someone (not naming names) got a bit too excited and got some soreness in his knee after Week 3's long run. Good news is that Week 7 marks the official comeback of the standard running schedule, and here's to a long streak of 40+ miles a week! As proof, I give you yesterday's run:
http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=4627543
6.8 miles at a 7:46min/mile pace - boom!

	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday	Total
Week 1	--	--	5.3 Miles	--	5.7 Miles	2.9 Miles	8.0 Miles	21.9 Miles
Week 2	--	5.5 Miles	6.8 Miles	--	--	5.6 Miles	11.9 Miles	29.8 Miles
Week 3	--	7.0 Miles	4.5 Miles	6.5 Miles	--	7.5 Miles	13.0 Miles	38.5 Miles
Week 4	--	6.0 Miles	--	--	5.6 Miles	--	10.8 Miles	22.4 Miles
Week 5	--	5.5 Miles	--	--	--	14.0 Miles	6.0 Miles	25.5 Miles
Week 6	--	--	7.2 Miles	--	--	--	17.0 Miles	24.2 Miles
Week 7	--	6.8 Miles	--	--	--	--	--	?? Miles

Man, that's early

So, I'm finding that to fit everything in my day,  I've needed to adjust my definition of a "day". My new "days" start approximately an hour before the old ones, and last just as long. At least I'm running during the grumpiest part of my day, that magical hour after I've woken up where I can find fault with almost anything in the world. And today was not much of an exception, and despite my mood I managed a good mid-week run with even a few hills thrown in. This sunrise special was 5.6 miles with an 8:23min/mile pace:
http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=4560126

Where are all the hills you ask? I packed them in close to the end: 10 hill sprints (more like quick runs), with slow jogs back down for recovery:
http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=456014

And the knees? They were good [knocking on wood]. Now I just need to add only about 12 more miles of up-hill and I've got the second half of this race beat.

Aggressive

So, devoted fan, I have been waivering back and forth over the course of the past week thinking about whether to follow the Intermediate or Expert schedule for the training program I am using, and I finally decided to just go for it. So, following the sage wisdom that only a generic training printout can bring, I boldy set my sights on the 12 Mile Sunday run for this week. Granted, I need to step up my during-the-week runs a bit, but this would be a psychological victory and would spur me onto pushing myself with this more challenging workout. And I managed to pull in... 11.9 miles. Don't get me wrong, I'm thrilled to get these miles in, it was a solid run and though I was exhausted at the end, I felt pretty good. And I ran it in 1:43:19, making my pace just over 8:40min/mile! But really, I just wanted those last .1 miles. I kept working on gmap to see if I had run just a wee bit farther here, or took that one roundabout a little wider there. But no, it was not meant to be:
http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=4554999

But hey, I can't complain - got some good hills in, a nice milestone in the training routine, and (fingers crossed) my pace should be fast enough to keep me in this race.

CORRECTION: The author would like to apologize to his 2nd fan for the apparent ommission of his name in the first line.

Testing charts!

Ok, the amount of nerdiness will continue to grow as I learn more and more about how to code in html. Right now? Keeping it simple - boom!

	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday	Total
Week 1	--	--	5.3 Miles	--	5.7 Miles	2.9 Miles	8.0 Miles	21.9 Miles
Week 2	--	5.5 Miles	6.8 Miles	--	--	5.6 Miles	11.9 Miles	29.8 Miles

It's a three-fer kind of post

So laziness has slowly crept upon me, as it is wont to do, and so I must cover the tracks for three runs! There is good news here with the maps I'll be attaching - the gmap-pedometer folks awesomely upgraded both their maps and what looks to be their mapping algorithm - sweeeeeet! Now I don't have to laboriously go back over my runs to see what kind of uncertainty to attach to the mileage (yes, I do this), and instead can just point and click away. So enough crushing over the gmap-pedometer upgrades - onto the runs!

The first run (Tues) I don't really even remember, but I can say that I put in 5.5 miles and it was under a 9min/mile pace(?), but ok, it was pretty vanilla and I'm surprised it took as long as it did to totally and utterly forget it:
http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=4553191 

My Wednesday run was supposed to be a speed workout, but ended up being a 2 mile extra wandering session through Swiss fields. Note to self: when I see a bunch of swiggly lines for a road map, I should not think "wow, that looks like a really cool flat wooded area"; instead, I really need to tell myself "I bet those are a bunch of really really really big hills". Guess which thought is correct? Yeah, I know that now too. But heck, I warmed up for this with a 10min/mile pace for mile 1, and then ran the rest at about an 8:07min/mile pace, which I'll take any day:
http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=4553186 

Today's run was a shorter but still pretty quick run (nothing special), but should help me get my mind ready for tomorrow's 10-12 miler. I ran it at an 8:08min/mile pace, and even threw in a couple of hills:
http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=4553185 

Next up, big run tomorrow. In the immortal words of Samuel Beckett (aka Stephen J. Bartowski, aka Scott Bakula), oh boy.

Yeah, I should have checked that...

So looks like I was in for a post-run surprise today (not a bad season injuring kind) when I finally gathered the courage to see when my marathon schedule officially starts. I typically count down the days until the official schedule starts, but with the bum knee it felt much more like opening up the vegetable drawer to see that "oh, yeah" those tomotoes had turned bad weeks ago. So I ripped off the bandaid, and found myself looking at schedule that was already one week done. And what was on tap for today? An 8 miler, which is what I ended up putting in. Noice. And with my 3 mile speed run yesterday, that got me up to a 22 mile first week, which I'll take gladly. The run yesterday was as flat as can be:
http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=4537210
 I was aiming for a 7min/mile, but ended up just shy with a 21 minute run and 2.89 miles logged in. Evidently my careful gmapping was all for naught, as I *thought* I'd done exactly three miles. Le sigh.

Today was a great day for a long run, and by mile 7 I finally found my elusive stride.  It was a mish-mosh of all my runs earlier this week, and yes, I am rounding up to eight on this bad boy (deal with it!):
http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=4540267

It was a 69 minute and 45 second jaunt through the rolling hills of the French/Swiss(Frish or Swench), which averaged out to a 8:45min/mile. Now that I'm in my schedule, it'll start getting interesting - I'll be ramping up to more than 30 miles a week starting this Tuesday. The plan is to keep it flat until week 4, keeping as much pressure off the knee until I've got a strong stride back and then I'll go into attack mode - hitting the hills on long runs, sprint work in the neighborhood 15%'ers and start racking up the miles. Huah!

Putting down some tracks

Ok, we're officially day two on the Don't Call it A Comeback But It's Totally a Comeback Tour (DCIACBITACT for short), and I managed to get a nice 5.7 miles in - noice! Not only that, there are signs of life in my legs and I managed to run this bad boy in 44mins:
http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=4536339 

That's right, for all you math majors and others with calculator (apps), 7:45min/miles today. I'm still avoiding the hills as much as I possibly can, which is no easy feat living on the side of a mini-mountain. And yes, does that route look familiar? You betcha, I ran almost the exact same thing two days ago. But, the big thing is the mileage, and I'm looking for a nice fallback 5-6 mile route that I can just do whenever I need to get a run in, and the Feigeres hill (the kick-ass huge hill from earlier posts) is off the table until I'm convinced that my knees are completely good to go. But if you read this post (and I know my one follower totally does), then lose not hope. There will be longer runs, twists and turns, and maybe even some fence hopping and river jumping later on. Or not, but let's not kid ourselves, I'm not running from the law, nor do I want to give the law the impression that I'm running away from them. And this is why I avoid late night posts.