Monday: 0 run, 16 ride
First ride in several weeks. Solo late afternoon. Pensive as I try to eke out any semblance of the family getting together at all this summer, plus I had a staff member resign today before I even had chance to replace the last departure, and of course I'm frustrated and depressed over my stalled and lengthy wound healing in its 4th month now. End of rant. For now.
Tuesday: 10
AM: Week #16 at Westerly Hospital Wound Care. Fourth application of porcine-derived cellular tissue, and a huge improvement in wound size reduction since last week. The end is near (hopefully).
PM: Ran the new race course at Grills. Not sure I would've chosen this myself, given that I new it would be overgrown, but I was happy to go with Matthew's choice. Brady joined us as well. Of course he did!
For a mid-afternoon in August, we remarked how the weather was relatively comfortable, and not the stifling heat or unbearable humidity that accompanies many a summer day. Some of the overgrown sections were really bad and I got a lot of nicks and bumps from itchy plants we had to run through. The worst is the white trail in the cleared field near the Larson foundation. The racetrack trail that we cleared in the spring is much better than I expected.
Wednesday: 8
AM: Procrastinated getting up and out of the house, and paid the price: had to cut the run short before work meeting. Really no excuse since today's first meeting was 9:30am. Ran with Brady at Burlingame: out Sammy C's, back Vin Gormley. Nobody out there. Quick stop at The Bakery.
PM: Final Tom McCoy Family Fun Run of the year. Tommy had called me earlier today and told me that he was under the weather and wouldn't be able to make the final run. Speaking of weather, this would be the only Fun Run this season where it actually rained. There were threats of rain and storms earlier this summer, but they never materialized.
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| Nice coverage from The Westerly Sun on our final Fun Run of the season |
My own run went exceedingly well, lowering my time from last week and notching my fastest Fun Run 5K since 2014, in 18:15. Ran 1st mile a little too fast in 5:36, my 2nd mile was much slower in 6:05, and 3rd mile a 5:42 before "kicking" it in. Really happy with this one!
Thursday: 10
I conducted an 8am 2nd interview at a coffee shop in Cranston. Brady waited patiently in the car, and Matthew got a coffee and went to another table. Since I was in Cranston and didn't have any more meetings in the morning, we planned to stop at Big River Management Area on the way home.
Pouring rain, mud, and flooded trails awaited us, as did temps in the low 60s! For me, with anything over a 5-miler in Big River, it's pretty much inevitable that I'll get lost, and today was no different, but again, I didn't have anything pressing to get back for either. Fun run!
Friday: 7
AM: Brady scared us with his lethargy. He didn't want to move, when he did, he was limping, and he didn't want to eat. Uh oh. Wondered if it was somehow tied to his running yesterday and I should just wait and see if he improved. But even when he's been tired from running before, he ALWAYS wants to eat. Hmm. Decided to call the vet, and was told they could get him in in THREE WEEKS. Three weeks?! They gave us a list of other vets to try to call, and fortunately there is a new vet in town that just opened this week, and they were able to get him squeezed in for this afternoon.
PM: Once we had Brady's visit scheduled, I finished my work obligations and went with Matthew to run mid-afternoon at Haley and Bluff. With temp right around 80°, I just found it miserable. Stuck to fire roads, which are mostly shaded under a canopy of trees. Matthew seemed to do fine, and I kept with him for about two miles, and then was dropped hard as appropriate and ran on my own. Not to whine incessantly, but just felt awful the whole way.
Finished, returned home, showered, and brought Brady to the vet. Poor thing - I actually had to lift him up into the car. The first issue they told us right away is that he had a high fever with a temp of 105°. As to the underlying issue, the vet found he had inflammation in all of his joints. He took some blood work, and suspected Lyme. He gave us a fever and inflammation reducer medicine, and some Doxycycline to get him started on while we awaited lab results. By bedtime, we could see a mild, but certainly not full, improvement.
Saturday: 20!
Change of plans: Today was the Block Island Tri. This is what I was looking forward to and had planned to participate in after my wound healed in 3 months or less. Only my wound still hasn't healed. Life doesn't always go the way you want it to, and life is short. So rather than sulk, I planned out my first 20-mile training run of the fall marathon season, incorporating the free and popular John & Jessie Kelley Half Marathon.
Got up at 5:45am and got my running clothes on. Normally Brady will get up right away, especially if I'm preparing for a run, but he showed no interest at all in getting up from his dog bed. I felt badly, but thought the best thing to do was to let him sleep until Jana got up, so I went downstairs on my own to get some breakfast before heading out to New London.
First seven: Arrived at Ocean Beach Park 1 hour 15 minutes ahead of race time, picked up my bib and started my planned 7-mile pre-race run at 6:55am, leaving up to a 10-minute buffer figuring a conservative 7:30 pace. I wanted to come back to the car to get a drink, pick up 2 GUs, and have time to get to the start. So why not just start earlier? No, I wanted my stopped time to be as short as reasonably possible.
Pretty uneventful pre-race run. I had mapped out a 7-mile route the night before, memorized street names and approximate mileage, and it was pretty easy to follow. There was one porta-jon on the route at a house under construction, so I ducked in there to take care of business and avoid having to wait in a long line upon my return to the race start (there were 1,000 entrants).
Returned with a good 12 minutes to spare, and caught up with a few WTAC runners pre-race before getting in line. I was very surprised as we were treated to Nick Bottone singing his own rendition of the Star Spangled Banner. I won't lie and say he hit all the notes perfectly, but I couldn't have done half as well, so I give him a lot of credit.
Back thirteen: The race started and the flood of runners were off. I saw Nick Alge moving up quickly and fought the urge to try to chase. Despite my self-professed target pace of "low 7s", my first three miles were in the 6:50s. Heard my name called out about a mile in, and caught up with Steven deCastro for a short conversation. He is training for an October marathon as well. Boston, maybe? Can't remember.
About Mile 3, I caught up with fellow age grouper Clay Howland (frequents Westerly as his mother lives there) and ended up running with him for the next 8 miles and talking and catching up and offering each other encouragement along the way. Really nice guy. He started running about the same age as I did (39) but where I thought I had done decently with having run 20 marathons, he's run 52!
Anyway, I was feeling fine running in the high 6s and low 7s until Miles 7 - 9 of course (Miles 14 - 16 on my run) where there were two hills right after one another that I thought would do me in. Neither was terribly long or steep and both were just under 100', but enough to wear me down. At the top of the second hill, Clay pulled ahead and I figured that was it. But in the final mile I picked it up to a 6:44 mile to finish ahead of him and passed several others along the way.
I crossed the finish line (1:30:45) with Nick Bottone calling out my name, and Pete from SNERRO looked at my clock time, looked at me, and threw up his hands as in "What happened; what's going on with that time?". He then came over to me and asked "was that a training run or something?". I told him he nailed it and I showed him my watch reading: 20.39 miles.
Post race: Had three bowls of chowder, and drank a copious amount of liquids. I was very dehydrated. Caught up with a number of runners.
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| The fire hose from the NL Fire Department was great. Although I couldn't go fully under it and get my head and wound wet, I could still step into up to my waist and cool off nicely. |
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| The race finishes right at the beach. Same thing in that I can't go in deep, and can't swim, but I waded in to my chest. |
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| Somehow I still finished 2nd in my old man age group, and took home a health hydrangea as a prize. (It's still sitting outside; I should actually plant it real soon.) |
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| For a free race, this sure comes with a lot of bling, including a medal for each finisher. |
Sunday: 7
Stonington XC trails with Nick and Kevin. As they will be helping marking this year, gave them a preview of course turns and intersections where we need signs. Good thing we got out there, as some maintenance will be needed by the Town of Stonington pre-race.
Weekly mileage: 63 run, 16 ride
Weekly synopsis: Great week! A number of good runs, and my wound is back to healing fast again.
Weekly highlight: Running an 18:15 in a 5K, followed closely by getting in my first 20-mile training run.
Weekly lowlight: None!
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