I have been with my training group for four years, serving as a coach, pace leader, motivator, and athlete. My favorite role is as athlete, where I get to spend my Saturday mornings running with people who have quickly become my friends. As my race times have improved, my group has become smaller. As I post more regularly, you will be introduced to the characters who choose to run with me on a regular basis. My role as a therapist wishes to respect people's privacy as much as possible, so I'll be giving nicknames to people.
For the last two years, I have been running with Charlie Brown and British Mike. When I told them about my new blog, Charlie told me about his history of always having the nickname Charlie Brown, so it kind of stuck. British Mike is, well, British and his name is Mike. Charlie is aiming for a 3:30:00ish LA Marathon in March, while Mike is aiming for a 3:10:00 Boston Qualifying time at the Surf City Marathon in February. Because we are all in very different parts of our training plan, we all ended up with different distances on Saturday. I'm building from an injury, so my plan was for 10 miles, Charlie peeled away at mile 8 to run some hills, and Mike ran 11 miles before the group started so he could have the support through his last 10 miles. It was when Mike showed up after our group stretch wearing a Marathon Maniacs singlet as one of his layers (it was 36 degrees in Los Angeles on Saturday, so basically the Earth had stopped) that we were taken aback. How could someone that we had become so intimate with never revealed that he was a Maniac? I've never met a Maniac who didn't talk about their membership before. His excuse? His skin tone is too white to be seen in his singlet without other colors.
The run went fairly well. My new heart rate monitor arrived on Friday, so I have been estimating my aero pace lately and haven't been as strict with keeping my 148 bpm training. We managed an 8:21 per mile overall pace (and at this point in the training, we stop our watches at our water tables), but I know that I was probably closer to 160 bpm for a lot of the run, especially on the hills leading from Griffith Park to Silver Lake. I'm feeling stronger in my ankles and I didn't feel any tightness either Saturday afternoon or Sunday.
Due to a late night on Saturday for my office suite's open house and early morning Sunday for the therapist's association awards breakfast and presentation, I missed out on my Sunday run. I really need to make sure that I'm not overextending my marketing for my practice when I'm seriously training. The therapist's presentation gave me some great ideas on awareness, which I'm still formulating on how to turn into an organized idea for running. Stay tuned for that. I will get there later in the week. I also missed my run this morning due to a therapist committee meeting. Two days in a row without running and clients scheduled until 9:00 tonight. I WILL RUN tomorrow!
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