The RunRunLive 4.0 Podcast Episode 4-315 – Gary Allen and I talk running
 
(Audio: link)
 
 
 
 
 
garyallenLink epi4315.mp3
 
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Intro Bumper:
 
Hey there! This is Chris your steward for today’s ride along the colorful roadway of endurance sport. Practically, this makes for three podcasts in three weeks for you from the RunRunLive headquarters (Located in a dank cave in Western Pennsyvania that at one point in its history housed bandits, velociraptors and coal miners), just kidding, I’m actually in my home office.  I did have a trip to Denver, but it got canceled.
 
Episodes 4-313, 4-314 & 4-315 should be in your inbox, slightly out of order, due to a disruption in the space-time-chance-&-luck continuum.
 
mayflower-smallI seem to remember closing Episode 4-315 with the note that I intended to run a ½ marathon in Plymouth.  That would be two weeks ago now, and I did indeed run it.  First actual race for me since the heart procedure so my main goal was, as is my practice now, not to die and have fun.
 
My top concern was that I might pull something or otherwise hurt myself, given that I have not been doing much road work since Boston.
 
Coming off of Boston having run 8:30’s I figured that something in that range would be easy enough.  On the top end, if I felt good, sub-8’s would not displease the running gods.
 
I told coach to NOT taper me for the race, just treat it like a long tempo run.  I kept a nice training load right up to a bike and hard swim workout the day before.
 
A bunch of us from my club got up and drove down in the morning.  Brian had looked at the course map and said the first half was flat-to-down-hill, with big, long hill at mile 6 and then rolling hills to the end.
 
This was a first year race, but there were close to 2,000 runners.  The first mile was a bit jammed up, but I broke free and was feeling good enough spinning out the downs and flats, going a bit too fast, like I am wont to do.
 
I had my Garmin on but wasn’t looking at it, just running, chatting up the pretty girls, thanking the volunteers and having fun.  Looking at the data, those first 5 miles were in the 7:20 range, and that’s a bit fast (right now) with no taper, no training and a wonky heart.  I knew it was non-sustainable going into the hills.  My Heart rate was good – nice zone 4-5 effort but no flipping out into the 180-190 Afib range.
 
There was a water stop at mile 6 with porta-potties, so I stopped to have a rest, and reset my pace a bit.
 
There was a mile-plus hill from Mile 6, through the 10k and mile 7.  And it turns out this wasn’t the only one.  What Brian had called ‘rolling hills’ was a set of long steep hills over the last 10k that must have really beat up the back of the packers.
 
I just geared down and worked the hills, giving back some time but not suffering too much.  My legs weren’t all that peppy from the lack of taper.  I came in, according to the timing chip right on 8 minute miles, and looking at the data, my HR stayed in bounds for the most part, so I’m going to call that a win.
 
I mean, I could worry myself by remembering that I was trying to break a 1:30 ½ and ran a 3:23 at Boston 4 year’s ago, but that’s another season.  I feel like I’ die for a good run now, pun intended.
 
We’re done with the ‘happy-see-the warm-sun’ part of summer up here and into the ‘hot-sticky-horsefly-infested’ part of summer.  I was down in Atlanta last week when they were having a mini heat wave.  I got up in the morning to run and it was awful.  There was no oxygen in the air and I ended up coming back to the hotel soaked like I had been swimming.
 
Which is a pain in the butt, because then I had to pack up and get to work.  First, what you have to do is rinse out your wet stuff in the sink to remove some of the toxic man juice.  Then you roll them up in a couple towels and walk on them.  Then you