Day Five: The heart of a Champion

What a day today!  Woke up late today, i felt like a slacker as i got out of bed and my alarm clock read 4:42 AM.  I mean, what kind of champion wakes up after 4:30 AM, especially the day after a recovery run.  For some reason i was still sore, but no matter, I was ready to take on the day. 

Since 4:30 AM is going to be my new wake up time, i decided to jump start the morning with some fresh new Bieber, or Biebs, as I call him.  I started playing "Baby" from my computer stereo as i was getting ready when there was a knock on my door.  It was my neighbor and he looked tired.  I told him that he should get some sleep because of his tiredness and turned around to do one of my sweet dance moves as a warm-up.  I think he wanted to show me a new dance move too because he kept moving his arms and hands towards my neck like he was  trying to spin me.  However, i was in no mood to dance so i just moved him towards the door and shut it and continued on my merry preparation.  I should mention though that i decided to pick up a new running bag where i can carry all my gels and stuff.  I think its pretty awesome.

Anyways, today's AM run called for a 2 X 3 X 3 which is 2 KM medium followed by 3 KM at slightly harder pace followed by a 2 KM at a 76% age graded pace.  I was heading out the door when i saw a police car in the parking lot.  Apparently some guy was playing party music in the building.  I told the officer that the only person i knew who was awake too was my neighbor.  I told him that my neighbor didn't seemed to have gotten much sleep so it must have been him.  The police man said he was going to talk with him.  I hope they can help him get to sleep.  The police must do that, after all, they are here to serve and protect.

The run started out good, albeit very cold.  I was hitting the streets at a good 3:24/Kilometer clip which was ok for the first 2 kilometers.  I decided to switch to kilometers because I heard Steve Prefontaine used to train in kilometers and since I am faster than him right now I didn't want his training to be even remotely better than mine.  Things were going smoothly until what appeared to be a mouse got in my way.  It was HUGE and caused me to sprint out of the way.  Unfortunately, i sprinted into a telephone pole and was now on the ground... Someone must have been drinking Kool Aid because the snow down there was red.. But then i noticed that when i got up, the red kept coming.. OMG!  I have a bloody nose!  I immediately headed back in quick manner.  The first KM home was run at a 3:10 followed by the second one at 3:02.  When i got home, my nose was no longer bleeding and the police were gone..  Overall, i ran 4 KM in 13:00 which is pretty pathetic.   If I'm gonna run like a champion, i am going to have to stay away from telephone poles.  I immediately went through MAPQUEST for the next two hours to identify where all of the telephone poles were in my running routes to avoid running into them in the future.

I didn't realize that doing so took so long as by the time i finished it was 8:00 and i was supposed to be at work at 8:30.  Oh crap.. I hope my boss understands that by identifying telephone poles I am really helping America who needs me to win the Olympics.  I will break out my evening run in the next post.