December 29, 2007

Saturday, December 29, 2007
Run 8 miles at steady pace, mostly hr ~140. 8:09, 8:51, 7:32, 8:59 (33:31 out), 8:17, 8:10, 7:42, 8:13 (32:22 in). 65:53 total, 8:14 pace. Nice day, 37 degrees, calm. Cloudy at start, sleet and freezing rain during mile 2, clear and sunny for last 3 miles with a lovely sunset. I was a bit worried about my left knee, which I tweaked on Christmas day while leaning over to grab a donut, or something like that. It’s been hurting ever since, and I wasn’t sure how it would feel while running. That’s why I didn’t run Thursday night after darts; with the new slushy snow I didn’t want to risk slipping and really injuring the damn thing. If it had interfered with the running today, I would have cut the run short without hesitation. I can deal with a running related injury by replacing the running with pool running. But the knee felt fine! I must admit though, my arms felt like they ran long yesterday.

More positive data. HR at end of run was 139 – just where I wanted it. After 2 minutes it was under 100, after 4 minutes under 90, and sub-80 after 6 minutes. I note that at the beginning of the stretch it was about 56, and at the end of the stretch about 80. Active-Isolated Stretching works. For the 800th time, thank you Jim Wharton.

I’ve been thinking about the ironman triathlon distances. 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike, 26.2 mile run. Top triathlon times might be something like swim 55 minutes, bike 4 hours 45 minutes, run 2 hours 45 minutes. Luc Van Lierde, in his world best 7:50 in 1997, turned splits of :44, 4:28 and 2:36. Yikes, those are incredible splits! For runners and cyclists, it’s pretty rare to go on a training run/ride as far as the race, but competitive swimmers regularly do training swims two or three times the ironman distance. Based solely on time, the ironman seems highly weighted to favor the bike specialists. Yet despite the small proportion of overall time, the swim ruins more triathlons than the bike, especially at Hawai'i where the water is hot and wetsuits banned. Believe me, 1.5-2 hours of hard swimming in hot salty water can leave you dangerously dehydrated. I remember finishing the Waikiki roughwater swim (the same weekend princess di was killed) one year when I was a bit out of shape and the current ran against the swimmers. It took me well over 2 hours to finish, and when I made it back to land, my tongue was swollen twice its normal size. For the skilled swimmer, however, 2.4 miles is pretty much a sprint. I know with an absolute certainty that I could not possibly run a marathon right now, nor could I come close to 112 miles on a bike. Yet I could go out and swim twice the ironman swimming distance without much of a problem. I'm fortunate I grew up in the water.