Day Four: Born to Run?

So i am not what you would call a "reader", but i picked up and read the entire first chapter of the hit book "Born to Run"



I must say.. it was the most provacative 30 pages I've ever read in my life since the time i read the cliffnotes to "Of Mice and Men" in the eighth grade.  I always thought that running barefoot was what slow people did so that they could have an excuse for being slow.. but this book has inspired me to run barefoot starting with today's 20-mile recovery run.

Before i went out on the run, i called my ole coach for some advice.  As mentioned before, he is quite the jokester.. when i called, he answered with a "how did you get my number?" hahaha.  he is like the Dane Cook of answering phones (my favorite comedian of all time).  Well i mentioned the barefoot thing to him, and he said that beginning to run barefoot, in chicago, in january was not wise and that 20-miles for a recovery run was probably overdoing it.  i told him that his job was to just say yes and that i really enjoyed his olympic marathon performance.. oh wait, he never ran the marathon in the olympics.  To which he hung up on me after telling me to never call him again.  well, i guess i will have to coach myself from now on.

The Run

Being that it was 35 degrees today, i figured that all i needed were my compression shorts, a long sleeved bon jovi shirt, winter hat and gloves.  Notice how i didn't say socks and shoes.  hahaha.  Its official, i will now become the greatest runner in the world because i no longer need shoes.  Typically i put in 2,000 miles in a pair of shoes before buying a new pair.  i know that is not a lot, but i've only had ten stress fractures in the past two years so my numbers speak for themselves and justify my training philosophy.

Now since this was a recovery run, i wanted to keep it at an age grade of 71.7% (which is at a slow clip of 6:30 miles).  I have now picked up a new training measure, where i am going to age grade all of my runs.  I figure that if i can't train at a minimum age grade of 71.7% (my fifth favorite number) then i need to move to des moines, iowa and have a sex change operation for sucking so bad at running.  I stepped out my door and began the easy recovery run at the 6:30 clip.  The first few seconds felt awesome, but then i began to notice how uncomfortable it was to run on snow, water and ice with your bare feet.  I also learned that people (mean people) throw salt on the ground in attempts to prevent fast people from running faster... but since i was "born to run", i decided to man up and just do it.  The first five miles were kind of cool as i think word got out that i was training.  It was evident as people were honking their horns at me and yelling words of encouragement as i ran down Illinois Route 20 onto Interstate 290 East.  The fact that cars seemed to be flying past me in the left lane inspired me to run faster.  Around mile ten i decided to turn around and make it a there and back.  By this point, my feet were feeling raw and i noticed some blood.  Well, being the winner i am i kept running.  However, at mile 12 my body felt like it was in absolute pain and my breathing was disorderly.  How could this be?  This was my only recover run scheduled for the month and i was running at a pedestrian 6:30 clip.  Well i looked at my watch and felt like a pussy.  My garmin showed me that i was really at a 6:32 clip.  This was really discouraging and distracting.. So distracting in fact, that i tripped over a homeless man and fell into the median.   As i got up, the homeless guy yelled at me a little and then asked for one dollar.  I told him that Obama was in office now and that his money was no good here.   He started chasing me so i picked up the clip and continued running.  Finally, got back home and finished the run.  It was shocking.... my overall time for the recovery run was 2:15:07 which was a 69% age grade.  I was very disappointed in myself.  I blamed the homeless man.  How can i be an Olympic runner if i can't recover at a 70% age grade? Then i remembered that i ate a taco on Thursday night with my buddy Tim and that must have been it.  Tim is a cool dude but he sure is awful slow.   I think his best 5k time is like a 16:13 or something slow like that.... but he tries and i know my being fast inspires him to try to be less-SLOW. 

So overall, today was a complete failure.  I was unable to do the recovery run at a respectable age grade.  I also noticed that my body was tired and sore.... but that must have been from the prior days of training because it most certainly was not the result of a recovery run.  well anyways, i am going to take a break for rest of the day and start setting up my race schedule (will be posted soon)... But here is a picture of my foot to give you an idea of how injured it became.