July 6

AM: 10 miles easy

Easy recovery run to Berkeley Marina in the morning before a day in Napa Valley with the family.

July 5

AM: 2-mile tempo, 800m jog, 6 x 400m w/ 400m jog, 11 miles

I felt awfully flat during this light workout following a late evening. I struggled from concentration lapses and through the cold wind commonly associated with San Francisco, but normally spares the East Bay. I held back from a larger workout in the event that I'm racing Friday, which is looking doubtful at this point.

Splits: 10:19, :70, :70, :71:, :72, :70, :69

July 4 (104 miles/week)

AM: 12 miles easy, drills

Decent run on the fire trail before my family rolled into town. When 104 miles feels like a recovery week, we're making progress. I have a real recovery week coming next week.

July 3

AM: 18 miles easy/moderate with 4 miles @ MP

I met Sean and Kyle at the fountain for the beginning of my long run. We started up the fire trail, and I was not feeling particularly spry, as evident by some laboring on the connector trail, a brutally steep 200m section. We pressed forward, and came to yet another steeper and rockier climb, heading up to Grizzly Peak Rd. This was also steep and covered in loose rocks, making for a tough 5 minutes or so where I fought to lose cadence and fall into a hike, rather than a run.

Once we finally did make it to the top, the climb at least rewarded us with a spectacular view while I physically tried to shake some of the lactic acid out of my quads, as if could somehow trickle down past me knees and out of the bottoms of my feet by doing so (no such luck). The day was clear enough that we could see across the bay to Angel Island, the Golden Gate Bridge, and Marin. When the weather cooperates, the Bay Area offers some fantastic scenery that can break up the drudgery of the day-in, day-out miles.

We descended for what seemed to take an eternity, giving me some indication of how far we'd just been climbing. It was here that I happily discovered the Kyle ran for a small school in Minnesota and was a college teammate with none other than the GRC's own Dylan/Dwight/Desmond/Darrell/DeAndre Keith.

After I parted ways with Sean and Kyle, I made it to the dirt track right at the 90-minute mark, which had patches of mud from the sprinklers watering the infield. I took a gel and some water before hopping right into a marathon pace effort, clicking comfortably downward 5:40, 5:38, 5:37, 5:28. I stepped off feeling like I could have done more and pleased with the effort, and jogged it in where a smoothie, an ice bath, soccer, and a nap awaited.

July 2

AM: 10 miles easy

PM: 7 miles easy

A pair of relaxed recovery runs. The morning was on the Fire Trail, and the evening was through the Berkeley neighborhoods and campus with core work and pushups afterward.

July 1

AM: 4 miles easy

PM: 4-mile split tempo (3 laps @ ~marathon-half-marathon pace, 1 lap at 3k/5k pace), 4 x 200m strides, 11 miles

The only thing notable about the shake-out run is that I was out of coffee. That made it go by so much slower.

After work, Sean and I teamed up for the mixed tempo run, prescribed by the SCTC coach, Carl. Most of the guys in the club are either recovering or peaking for club nationals next week. As for me, I'm backing down, but as the last three weeks have shown, the race will merely take place during a recovery week without a real full-blown taper. This assumes I get into the race, which I have not as of yet.

Anyway, the workout wasn't that long but significantly better than the 4-mile tempo from just a few weeks ago. I ended up running faster than that, even with the "hot" laps. I didn't get to run those quite as fast as I wanted, but they were safely in 5k pace range. I will always, always need to develop my inner derailluer more. Switching gears doesn't come naturally to me. The good news is that I comfortably ran my 10-mile PR pace for 4 miles, even though Sean blew my doors off with a :66 at the end.

Splits: 4:05, :72, 4:03, :71, 4:02, :73, 4:00, :72

June 30

AM: 10 miles easy

Easy recovery run in the morning that included a stop for a train and another pit stop.

I had an interesting discussion later about the opportunity cost of running. This issue relates closely to the question I'm sure a lot of us get: "How do you have time to run so much?" The easiest answer to that for me has always been, "I don't watch much TV." Do that, and it's pretty easy to find and extra 90 minutes in your day. Running means that we don't get to do things like join kickball leagues, go out to (multiple) happy hours, sleep until noon on the weekends, and many other sacrifices that we gladly make to pursue what's not just a sport, but a lifestyle. If you're reading this entry, then you probably already know all of that. Carry on.

What is not often discussed is the true opportunity cost of running. How much are we giving up by running every day, or as was my case, 87 miles per week for a year? The chart below is my attempt to quantify that.

I made a lot of assumptions here, and while I was conservative with some figures (that I average 7:30 pace on all of my runs), I was liberal with others (excluding travel time to run or race, stretching, the gym, self-absorbed training log contemplation and analysis, etc.). Another key assumption I made here is that I could replace running 1:1 with a job that pays $20/hour without taxes, and that this job would likewise require no other commute or time investment other than punching the clock. I also included the fact that, if I gave up running overnight, I'd still find 6 hours per week to get some form of exercise to avoid total physical atrophy and to keep healthy, which would likely save me more in the long run.

So for me, it costs me roughly $7,000 per year to run as much as I did last year. It's interesting to think about because, yes, that's a lot of cash. Obviously, there are a lot of intangibles with running, like boosting productivity in other areas and feeling good about life. However, what this does give is a baseline answer to some important questions that I ask myself--admittedly too often. I'm really self-conscious about this. Here's the breakdown of "runner" me versus "non-runner" me:

Why keep doing this? Why "waste" so much time running?

I had written a few comments here initially for the "whys", but they didn't really reflect my thoughts on the issue, so I'm starting over after thinking about it more. The short answer is that running brings me balance and happiness in my life. The long answer is that, while running is often cast as a sport for loners, I've met many if not most of my best friends through running. This is true for my girlfriend, the GRC guys, friends and teammates from college, friends from high school, and many friends in North Carolina. In basically every chapter of my adult life the best friendships I've forged have been with runners. Many of those same folks have quit running, but the relationships and friendships stay the same. That's noteworthy. Critics might call running a sport of narcissists, but I challenge that based on how much time we spent supporting one another and building each other up.

All of the relationship building and camaraderie all complement the individualistic self-improvement, chasing goals, staying fit, and just the sheer visceral joy of the pursuit. To me, while it might be technically easy to quantify how much running cost, the intangibles of the sport in the end blow any sort of analysis like that away. Even though it's a sport often obsessed with numbers, it's really the qualitative components that get me out the door every day. Twice.