Sunday, November 19, 2006

Where's the couch?

Oh man! Andrew is definitely trying to kill me, or at least run me into the ground! Today's long run at Boyden Lake was tough on both of us, with A coming off his 1st of many planned 100 mile weeks and myself just plain tired. The border guard must have had a chuckle when he asked me where I was going today...long pause..."Mmmm, aaaa, going to Calais, I mean Eastport to run with a friend". The coffee still hadn't kicked in and for a second I had no clue where I was going or what to say. Luckily he didn't pull me over for a search but just smiled and said to have a good run.

I arrived a few minutes early (coulda got a few more minutes sleep there A) and fumbled with my gear to get ready for our cool morning run. The day was a bright sunny with temps of about 34F or 2C and a light northerly wind and only warmed up a few degrees during the run. Andrew braved it in just shorts and 2 long sleeved tops but I went with the windbreaker and pants and was OK.

We started out slow with a couple of 8:30's to get the bugs out and slowly got up to speed by 5-6 miles in. The Sipayik trail was nice today in that we had a nice view of the ocean with the clear sunny skies and zipped along at 7:30 ish with the wind at our back. Of course, when we turned and backtracked into the wind it was a different story and the goosebumps on Andrew's legs created enough drag to even slow him down! The middle miles seemed longer today, and the rolling hills also seemed more rolling than usual but this is to be expected as the mileage creeps up. We don't really watch our pace much on these runs but let it just come to us and once again it creeped down under 7:50 for the last 6 and 7:30 for the final mile (horses could smell the barn). Same 21 mile loop as last week in the same time of about 2:50. Another great training run in the bank but still no plan for Boston which is only 22 weeks away.

Total for last week was 53 miles in 6 runs. I also managed to fit in a bit of quality with 3 miles of tempo pace (under 7:00 pace) during a 10 miler. I'll work at increasing that over the next few weeks with one quality day per week, at least until I come up with a 'real' training plan.

Have a great week everyone!

6 comments:

Jamie Anderson said...

Wait, I think Andrew said YOU were kicking HIS butt during the run. :-) Nice going to the both of you'se.

Andrew said...

Mike, I found the couch.

Phil said...

For having no "plan" you are certainly getting in a lot of quality runs. Great work.

Thomas said...

You and Andrew have to stop trying to blame each other. I get more than enough of that from my kids, thank you.

And I agree with Phil. For someone without a plan you're doing some solid training.

UMaine Cooperative Extension said...

I may have to reconsider coming up to join you guys for a run in December, I may not make it back alive.

Dawn - Pink Chick Tris said...

What's a couch? I haven't seen one in eons and I don't even run with Andrew, not that I could ever keep up with either of you.

Week is going good so far. Started with the usual swim, that I still have to blog about.

By the way if you guys work each other too hard you'll both be too tired to run with me if I ever make it over there.