March 30

PM: 9 miles easy

I ran for a little over an hour at dusk in Rock Creek Park after work. No morning run due to some work on my car.

March 29 (92 miles/week)

AM: 18 miles easy/moderate

PM: yoga

I jogged from my place to the Line for the GRC run this morning. We started off fairly relaxed, though I strode up the hills on Tilden and Ross a little bit, focusing on relaxing my stride. One weakness I have is that when I start to strain, my shoulders tighten like someone poured ice water down my back, and that doesn't do me a whole lot of good when racing. The run felt great overall with weather in the 60s by the time we finished.

March 28

AM: 10 x 2:00 on/1:00 off, 9 miles

Quick workout on the Al Buehler trail near Duke before more graduate school preview, looking for apartments, and driving back to Maryland.

March 28

AM: 6 miles easy, treadmill

PM: 4 miles easy

Recovery day. I got in a quick treadmill run before Duke's Nicholas School admitted students weekend all day Friday. This is probably where I'm headed in late July for school for my master's, so let the countdown clock on my days in Maryland begin.

After a day full of meeting people, listening to speakers, and reconciling how I'm coming to Duke despite 3.5 half years as an undergrad at Maryland, Valerie and I went on an easy run around a popular path that surrounds the Duke golf course, the Al Buehler Cross Country trail: ~3 miles of packed gravel dust with rolling hills. If life goes in the direction I think it's going, I'll probably see a lot of this place over the next three years.

March 26

AM: 12 miles easy

I took a slow, muddy trip through Rock Creek Park before driving with Valerie to Durham, NC for the admitted students weekend at Duke on Friday and Saturday.

The only highlight of the run was passing a friendly horseback rider. The trails in the park get narrow in places, so there isn't always a lot of room to pass. As a runner, I always do my best to announce my presence, walk past them, and say "hello" so I won't spook the horse. Today may have been the first day that I actually got an amicable response from a rider, and I normally just get cold glares from the person on the horse as I tiptoe past.

I've never totally figured that out. "Sorry I just accidentally kicked over that neat mound of poop your horse left on the trail?" I'm not sure why riders are usually so ornery.

March 25

AM: 6 miles easy

PM: 2 x 2 mile @ half-marathon to 10-mile pace w/ 2:00 jog recovery, 2 x 800m @ 5k pace w/ 2:00 jog recovery, 4 x 400m w/ 2:00 jog recovery, 12 miles

I felt surprisingly good during my morning run, only to feel a little stale for the workout.

P. Murphy and I ran this workout on our own at B-CC this week with a lot of people opting to lighten their loads with races this weekend. I still have more than a month before I start to back off, so I still want to get in a few more solid efforts.

The only downside to today was a windy track and my uncooperative rollin' colon, which forced me to take an unplanned and extended break between the 800s and 400s. 

Splits: 10:40, 10:30, 2:27, 2:27, :68, :68, :68, :68

March 24

AM: 10 miles easy/moderate, 7 x :10 hill sprints

PM: gym

I ran yesterday's run a tad quicker and threw in hill sprints again at the end. I'm loving hill sprints right now: they seem to both help my knee pain/tightness and make me feel incredibly strong.

After work, Valerie and I went to the gym, where I did the usual routine plus core work and leg extensions for my knee (per Jarrin's recommendation).

March 23

AM: 10 miles easy

PM: 5 miles easy

Both runs were pretty slow and easy today in Rock Creek Park. My knee hurt like hell when I first rolled out of bed this morning, which was already one of those mornings where your body falls out of bed in pieces onto the floor and your legs start stumbling to the coffee, arriving a few minutes ahead of your senses and consciousness.

One nice perk about going to grad school later this year will be the chance that I'll get to wake up on a regular basis and see the sun. That being said, I do appreciate running at sunrise (sometimes) because it always makes me feel like I'm getting a jump on the day. 

March 22 (81 miles/week)

AM: 16 miles easy/moderate

Valerie and I drove to Riley's Lock to meet a group of seven other GRC'ers for a long run. We started at a fairly leisurely pace that gradually warmed up along with the temperatures. Spring is definitely here in Maryland and DC: by the end of the run we had 55-degree temperatures and blue skies.

PMurphy, Bain, and I added on the Violet's Lock loop after we finished the usual P-shaped Riley's Lock, including the one monster hill there near the soccer fields.

I could still feel my knee the entire time, especially after yesterday's workout, but the soreness was manageable. For good measure, Klim, Patrick and I took a chilly thigh-deep dip in the canal to ice our legs.

My mileage took a little hit this week because of my knee, but I should be back to normal next week. Much of the really hard work is behind me now with about a month to go until Penn and Pike's Peek. I'm still expecting a good Cherry Blossom at this point as well, just two weeks from today.

March 21

AM: 8 x 3:00 on/1:00 off plus hard mile, 11 miles

P Murphy and I met at my place and ran a Beach Drive fartlek. I didn't feel great, but my knee seemed under control. Patrick kept the workout at six reps, and after interval #8, I was pretty close to the mile marker near the Meadowbrook stables. I decided then and there to finish the workout with a fast mile, trying to keep the same pace as the rest of the workout (~10k pace). I finished smoothly with a 4:58, running close to even splits and a little faster than I what I thought I had been running.

Good stuff: after a shaky week because of my knee, it felt good to nail a full workout. Some of my GRC teammates would say that "I'm winning the war" with my knee. I'd definitely say my knee is less a war and more a nuisance. If this were a "war," my knee would be Grenada.

March 20

AM: 1:00:00 moderate, elliptical

PM: 5 miles easy

I cross-trained in the morning to give my knee a little break. After work, I ran easy with Valerie, and it didn't bother me as much.

I iced it a couple of times during the day today and elevated my legs in the evening. One day at a time: my workout is still on for tomorrow.

March 19

AM: 10 miles easy

I met Dickson early in the morning for a run in Rock Creek Park. My knee started off feeling tight and "cranky" but it gradually loosened up.

I opted for total rest in the evening to give my knee a break. I iced it a few times during the day while at work.

March 18

AM: 5 miles easy

PM: 3 miles @ half-marathon pace, 400 jog, 2 miles @ 10-mile pace, 11 miles

My cranky knee felt so-so during the morning run...nothing terrible. One important lesson I have learned through all of this is when your freezer gel pack reads "don't place me directly on your skin, stupid," one should listen. After just 10 minutes of icing last night, I developed frozen blisters on my knee (otherwise known as "superficial frostbite"), which probably didn't help the tendonitis or whatever it is that's bothering my kneecap. Alarmed and legitimately fearing frostbite for the first time in my life, I plunged my knee into a warm bath, after rubbing the spots vigorously.

Lesson #2? If you think you have frostbite, don't rub it.

If you actually have frostbite, that just makes it worse. Check the comments section to see where Valerie will say "I told you so" about my frostbite scare because, well, she told me it would happen, yet I did it anyway. Call it trial and error, and this was most definitely an error.

I am done with frozen gel pack for injury. They're either dangerously cold or not cold enough. I am all ice, all the way from now on.

As for the track workout, the first two intervals were right on target and fairly evenly paced (15:59 and 10:25, respectively) with a large GRC group at B-CC. The soreness in my knee only grew, so I cautiously backed off instead of finishing the rest of the workout. The knee is just sore, and it still doesn't seem to make me limp or affect my stride, but I'd rather not play with fire because I'm usually extremely durable.

At this point, I just want to survive, fitness intact as much as possible, through the end of April. In the mean time, I'm going to continue nuking my knee with ice and antinflammitories.

March 17

AM: 7 miles moderate, strides

PM: gym

I decided to back off a little today to give my irritable knee a little break, running just once in the morning. I'd rather forgo a shake-out run and be closer to ready-to-go status for a quality day tomorrow. In an effort to practice what I preach, I'm erring toward the side of caution since this weird knee pain has been around for more than a week. A lot of the hard work is done anyhow.

As suspected, hill sprints actually seemed to help the knee pain, rather than vice-versa. I could barely feel the knee at all when I went to the gym, and I ended up with a strong lift as well.

This maybe-injury/weird pain stuff is tricky because it usually means playing constant mental games with yourself in addition to the frequent, highly scientific "poke until you feel something" self-health checks. I'm pretty sure that anyone who's ever dealt with anything from a nagging pain to a serious injury knows exactly what I'm talking about.

That being said, I feel little to nothing as I write this. A shake-out run follows tomorrow morning, followed by what I think will be a solid workout tomorrow night.

March 16

AM: 10 miles easy

PM: 6+ miles easy

Both runs were pretty relaxed today and spent mostly in the park. The morning run was solo and cut through the sort of eerie morning fog that causes ships to run aground. At one point, I headed across a baseball field, only to realize that I could see 10 or 15 feet in any direction. It was a "blanket of fog" in the truest sense of the term.

After work, I ran a mile or so with Valerie, met up with Jake and Bain, ran a few miles with them in Rock Creek Park, and then headed home.

I felt me knee again today on both runs. The pain is more annoying than anything crippling, and thus far, it doesn't seem to affect my stride at all. It was nonetheless a little swollen after dinner...that's no good. I'm going to need to keep an eye on this because I pretty much run through little aches and pains like this all of the time. Rarely do they last more than 1-2 weeks.

Booooooooooooooooorrrrrrrring...

I feel like there's more I can do with my training log here. Listening to an interesting debate between ESPN.com superstar Bill Simmons and irreverent writer Chuck Klosterman it got my wheels turning on the subject of editorial quantity versus quality during their debate about the status of newspapers and journalism as a whole in 2009, though largely in the spectrum of sportswriting and reporting.

On that note, I've been wanting for a while now to start improving my writing on here, and ideally I'd like to not write excessively about myself, which is admittedly tough on a blog titled Patrick Reaves' Training Log.

Seeing as I'm starting to get bored with myself, the ~20 people who read my training log every day right now must be getting really tired of my daily grind. I'm going to make an effort to brighten the content up here a little bit and wanting to just generally put more thought into this than I have for a while now...I'm just not totally sure how at this point. More to come on this later, but I wanted to throw my thoughts out there for the time being. I try to be enthusiastic about distance running and life in general, and I want my writing to convey that continually.

March 15 - Shamrock 5k (91 miles/week)

PM: 5k race, 15:30, 2nd place, 12 miles, yoga

Blech. I'm kind of frustrated about this race. It seems like a wasted opportunity. The race was on a fast course with good conditions. But...damn it...I blew my load too early. Klim, who both won the race and broke the 15-minute barrier for the first time, took the race out hard. This meant that from the get-go, I had two options: go out fast, risking certain death, or ease back and let the chance to stay in the race slip away immediately.

I chose the former, and certain death is exactly what happened. Had I not chased my fleet-footed friend in the beginning, I would have been out of the race because he was hammering from the gun, but by trying to stay in race early, I ironically took myself out of it. And I paid for it. After running running around a ~4:38 first mile (just two seconds off my mile PR from a similarly fast road course), I started tying up too soon and promptly crumbled to running 30 seconds/mile slower than my first mile. Shit. Klim's lead starting growing, and for the first time during any sort of race or workouts in weeks, I felt absolutely trashed already. I soon went into damage-control mode, thinking about fighting off everyone behind me, rather than the guy in front of me. That's obviously no good!

After the race, while I was definitely happy for my friend, I was a little pissed at myself that I let this unfold the way it did. I wanted to carve off a little more off my 5k PR before we get into longer race distances and definitely missed a chance to do that today. But, I don't like running for second if I think I have a shot at the win, and had I been more patient and relaxed, maybe things would have gone differently, or maybe not. I tend to have stronger races running even or negative splits, but that's harder to manage when the course like today's shoots everyone out of a cannon at the beginning. 

Today's especially disheartening because I ran PRs in the last two weekends in what were both essentially time trials. Today wasn't the day for a time trial (well...unless you're Jake). Today was for racing, and that disappoints me. 

After a 45 minute cooldown, I was a little cold, a little more hungry, and a lot grumpy, so I punked out on a Falls Road post-race gathering with my GRC teammates. Valerie dragged me out of Baltimore while I basically pouted like Calvin Klein model, but we got a little food (corned beef and cabbage!), went to Sunday yoga, and the world soon again was a brighter place.

I feel better already.

This should be where any Monday-morning quarterback whining on my part stops. I can't complain too much: 15:30 is still my fastest road 5k, and I still won a sweet pint glass and $125 for my bridesmaid efforts. I still think I'm in pretty good shape, all things considered. I can definitely use today as a learning experience...so there's also that.

Nice job again today for Klim and Melissa who both won and crushed their respective PRs and took home huge wins. My personal issues aside, the GRC had an awesome day racing in both Baltimore and DC.

March 14

AM: 10 miles easy, strides

I ran with the team from the store in Georgetown for an easy group run. We meandered through some Georgetown and Palisades neighborhoods before running down to the canal and Teddy Roosevelt Island, where we bumped into Pacers pal Dwyer. Klim and I finished up with strides on the canal.

Tomorrow's the Shamrock 5k in Baltimore. It's likely my last chance for a fast 5k for a while, so I'd like to get after this race. The competition is typically strong, and there's a little cash for the top 3. That would be nice. The beer afterward will be a bonus as well.

I actually feel like have both strength and speed (possibly, maybe...) right now, and that could make for a solid 5k. Judging from the last two weekends, and despite feeling sort of cruddy all week, I have no doubt I'm reached new levels of fitness.

No more rust-busters, pseudo-tempo runs or time trials...it's time just to f***ing race already. I'm chomping at the bit to see what I can do. A sub-15:00 5k is sort of a "lifetime goal" of mine. That may be a tall order for tomorrow, but I want to come as close as I possibly can if I don't sneak under it.

March 13

AM: 7 miles easy

PM: 5 miles easy

Recovery day. I ran both runs "doggie style," as my friend and college roommate Samy once put it (this was just his Freudian misinterpretation of me saying "dog slow").

Good news on the grad school front also: I received my first acceptance today from Duke. Seeing as I spent my undergrad years at Maryland and am forever a loyal Terp, this makes me emotionally conflicted, but really only during basketball season. I guess I should have known this when I applied to the program in the first place.

Kidding aside, I'm pretty excited about it. A couple of schools have yet to send out decision letters, but this was definitely good news. I'm headed to Durham weekend-after-next for a visit.

March 12

AM: gym

PM: 14 miles easy

I rolled out of bed to meet Tyler at the gym in the morning after his run and before he went back to PA. After work, I met P. Murphy for a night long run; since we're both racing Sunday, we wanted to get in our respective long runs now. 

My right knee has been bothering me since during the run last Sunday. I often get little aches, pains, and hot spots, and they usually go away on their own after a few days. It's not affecting my stride at all, but it's sort of annoying. It feels like the outer edge of my knee cap is rubbing against a wall.

Like I said, little gremlin pains like this come and go with me all the time. It's more irritating and tight than painful.

March 11

AM: 5 miles easy

PM: 3 x 2-mile @ goal 10M pace w/ 400 jog recovery (3:00), 11 miles

I felt like absolute hell today on both runs. I can definitely tell that the workload is catching up to me. My legs were pretty tight during the warmup for workout. 

I came around and still hit the times I was shooting for, running within a second on even-splitting all three, which I'm pleased with given the blustery conditions. Everyone split off into their respective groups and paces, so I ended up running most of this with P. Murphy. 

I'd planned strides afterwards, but my legs felt like mashed turnips and I had a R.I.C. that was so bad that I could barely jog anymore. After that was said and done, I ran an abbreviated 1 mile cooldown.

Splits: 10:30, 10:30, 10:28

Weird Dreams

Work stress and physical stress tend to have funny effects on my subconscious. In my sleep just a few hours following this workout, I dreamt that I...

1.) Sat in a business meeting with someone from the office supply store Staples on why they would want a Smart Grid and how we could partner with them. He had a thick German accent.

2.) The Staples rep gave me a Playstation 3 afterward, only to have my company's CEO exclaim "I love Xbox!" and promptly trump me, taking it for himself.

3.) I then went to Disneyworld, but in Toronto, where the "European" version of a popular ride at Animal Kingdom was supposedly much more "interactive" than its Orlando counterpart, per the German Staples guy's recommendation. I went on this ride with my friend from high school, Robbie, who was promptly eaten by an animatronic dinosaur during the ride like the attorney in Jurassic Park.

March 10

AM: 6 miles easy

PM: 11 miles moderate, strides

I ran at the crack of dawn with Tyler in Rock Creek Park. He has a Garmin footpod, which is making me even more obsessive about hitting round numbers during runs...heaven forbid I run 5.96 miles instead of 6.00 miles. This is exactly why I won't buy a Garmin. I would drive myself insane.

We ran on the Capital Crescent at night; this time P. Murphy, who was also teammates with Tyler (but at Penn State...Tyler transferred from UMD after his freshman year), joined up. The legs are pretty tired right now. That always seems to happen during recovery weeks.

March 9

AM: 10 miles easy/moderate

I got in an early out-and-back with Tyler (an old college teammate who's staying with me and Valerie this week) on the Capital Crescent. Feeling just OK this morning. It's also dark again because of daylight-savings time. 

Rough weekend on the grad school admissions front. I'm trying to weather that storm right now.

March 8 (101 miles/week)

PM: 20 miles easy/moderate, yoga

I met up with Dickson for a long run in Rock Creek Park. We were supposed to meet up with P. Murphy, but I of course dropped the ball on the logistics and we never found him. I ended up having a decent run. I'm definitely sore from this week, but I still had enough life to carry myself until the end. The warm weather was a nice bonus.

We ran in the afternoon, so I had yoga right after the run. That was downright painful. 

March 7 - No Rail on the Trail 10k

AM: 10k "tempo run," 32:16 (PR), 1st place, 13 miles total

So, about that "tempo run" I mentioned yesterday...this is going to sound like coy bulls***, but I really tried to go into today trying to keep the race as a workout. This was my third hard workout in six days off of a few weeks of higher mileage (high for me, anyway). To say I didn't go into today thinking, "Hey, let's run a PR," would be an understatement. 

However, the race was on the Capital Crescent Trail, one of the better examples of a false flat if there ever was one; the first half of the race today was a long gradual downhill, and the second half of the race was a net gradual uphill. My goal today was to run goal pace for Cherry Blossom next month. I think (hope) I still did that.

Consequently, given the target pace, when I thought I took the race out in what I believed to be ~5:15, I was considerably surprised to see a 4:55 first mile. 

"Whoops. OK, too fast..." This definitely didn't feel too fast. I thought that this must be because of the gradual downhill.

Mile 2: 5:01. Interesting. And still too fast. At this point, I had put a gap on a few guys who were with me through the first mile, and I was just chasing Matias on his bike and trying not to body check runners and walkers who didn't heed his warnings to step to the right (which a lot of people interpreted as "stand in the middle and weave."

Mile 3: 5:01. Again. 

I eventually hit the 5k turnaround in 15:31, which before last weekend, would have been a 5k PR. I then thought that surely I was going to slow in the second half because I still felt totally controlled, just as a tempo run should. When I hit Mile 4 in 5:07, though, I started scratching my head.

Rather than go to the well, I just tried to keep an even effort from this point onward, which makes sense because my next two miles were in ~11:00. I guess this suggests that I may have had a little help in the first two miles from the downhill. I finished feeling fairly cool and collected in 32:16, which is about a 2-second PR. I'm feeling good, and it's foolish to complain about a PR, even if it "wasn't supposed to happen this way." 

At my last 10k in December, where I ran what was then my PR, I felt like I was going to throw up and/or collapse afterward. Today most certainly did not feel as hard as that, and I ran slightly faster without chasing anyone in front of me. No, today felt more like the RRCA race last year, where I intentionally ran a hard workout, albeit technically a PR, but finished with plenty of gas left in the tank.

In college, my coach used to have us run a "steady state" workout almost once per week, which was supposed to be somewhere between a true tempo run and a race. That's what I'm going to call today's effort because that's what it felt like. 

This also means that I have to now stick to my plan and run this pace at Cherry Blossom next month. That seems like a long ways off right now.

March 6

AM: 10 miles easy

PM: 5 miles easy

Recovery day. I ran on the Rock Creek Park trails in the morning: still a sloppy mess from the melting snow. There were even a few sections that had packed ice left.

After work, I ran a few miles with Valerie and added a little on my own afterward. 

I'm racing tomorrow at the No Rail on the Trail 10k. I haven't decided whether I'm going to use this as a tempo run or actually throw down and race. It will likely be a game-time decision, but I'm looking for a good effort either way. We'll see. I'll have a 5k last week, a 10k this week, and a 5k next week in a stretch that will end three weeks before Cherry Blossom. I haven't made up my mind about whether that's too much. Given that I've only raced three times since November, with the XC 12k being the longest race, I think I should be OK if I do.

If I am using it as a workout, and not running all out, I'll need to come up with a clever fake race moniker. Hmmmm....

I have a recovery week planned next week...annnnnnnnnnnnnnd that's gonna be pretty nice. My legs will appreciate the break. I'm also looking forward to some beautiful weather this weekend. Spring is so close.

March 5

AM: 7 miles easy

PM: 6 x 800m w/ 400 jog recovery, 10+ miles

In the morning, there was still a fair amount of snow on the trails. The good news is that it's definitely melting, and temperatures will be in the 70s this weekend. On Saturday, Valerie and I already have a race and golf planned...gettin' excited for springtime.

Klim, P. Murphy and I pushed our track workout to Thursday this week to make sure the snow melted. Murphy did his own workout, while Klim and I ran a quick set of 800s. I felt a little concerned going in because during the warmup, while they weren't dead, my legs felt worn and fatigued. Since there's a good chance I will have to miss the UMD home meet at the end of the month, and I wouldn't be racing on the track much more than that, I opted for flats over spikes.

It was definitely a tough effort, but it went smoothly enough that Klim and I traded pacing duties. We also managed to hit negative splits: an important indicator that this was a controlled effort. 

We didn't set any concrete targets for the workout. I only knew that I'd want to finish with one under 2:20 and that I wanted to negative split to get there.

Splits: 2:25, 2:23, 2:20, 2:19, 2:18, 2:17

March 4

AM: 11 miles easy/moderate, treadmill

PM: gym

I got on the ol' hamster wheel and watched Sportcenter this morning instead of running outside. I didn't feel like dodging cars and tiptoeing around ice this morning. 

After work, I made it back to the gym for the first time in a while. It showed. My arms are pretty tired right now.

March 3

AM: 50:00 progression run, treadmill, 11 miles total

PM: 5 miles easy

Icy roads around here are a pain, but the treadmill is an OK backup plan, especially for tempo work or progression runs. That's exactly what I did this morning. After warming up in the neighborhood, I jumped on the treadmill at the gym. I spent the first 20:00 working down to 6:00 pace (the maximum speed, alas), and then gradually increased the incline the rest of the time. The last 10 minutes were definitely tough.

After work, aside from getting spooked by a herd of deer sitting in someone's yard, I ran a fairly uneventful shake-out run. 

March 2

AM: 9 miles easy

Very frustrated with work right now.

March 1 (102 miles/week)

AM: 16 miles easy/moderate

PM: yoga

We ran a new route from the Chevy Chase Store, coming down the Capital Crescent through Georgetown and then back up Connecticut Ave and Rock Creek Park. I felt decent, albeit with tight hamstrings from yesterday. An evening yoga class helped fix some of that.

Next week should be another higher mileage week, after which I plan to take a recovery week and gradually bring down my mileage once the real racin' starts.