Day Eighteen: No Love Run

As we are all aware it is the day before Valentine's Day (or VD as they say in the biz) and this fast dude has not been able to court his lovely crush from the gym.  I was able to see her latest 5k time (which was SLOW and run in Tuscaloosa, AL) by reviewing every race result on active.com for the past three weeks.  As sad as it is.. that she has been unable to break 16 minutes in the 5k... I still must do the right thing and tell her tomorrow that I can no longer continue this love until she shows improvements.  Be it mile splits, a thorough review of her training calendar, or maybe some character interviews with her parents and friends to see if she is truly committed to her plan.

I began this day with a wonderful 10 mile run in the morning... I hit it at a simple 5:25 clip and couldn't help but notice something peculiar.  Now i wore the same outfit i wore the past few weekends, but for some reason i couldn't stop sweating profusely.. I think it might have been the Thai Food i ate the previous Thursday..  normally i eat my thai food spicy because spicy means fast.  SLOW people would typically only dine upon non-spicy foods so that is something i can't do.  But anyways, my gloves, my thermals, my compression sleeves, my two running hats and three t-shirts seemed to be too much for today.  Normally after the first mile of a run, i am not the least bit parched but today i would have drank a vial of cat urine just to quench this insatiable thirst....  Why would it be this way?  Was i getting sick?

Anyways, i got back home and looked at the temperature of the thermometer and it read 45 degrees..  Now that couldn't be right.  I know they shut the cable off when i stopped paying due to not having a steady source of income (to which i told them the milllions i would make running and that their letting me have free cable could be a tax writeoff since i am an olympic champion).  But it was nice, and i just enjoyed that the run was over and i could relax until the next run.

Whilst reading through the latest chatroom topics on letsrun.com, i couldn't help but remember my first speed workout.  My father, not my mom's boyfriend Hector, but my actual biological father started re-entering my life when i was twelve.  He heard that i became a phenomenal runner and told me that he wanted to help me get faster.  Now for all those SLOW people out there, i would reccomend you using these tactics on your children if you wish to break the SLOW disease curse bestowed upon your family generations ago. 

1) The Tack-o-meter:  Make sure to superglue six tacks (pins pointing up) in the sole of your child's running shoe.  Then have the child do a speed set of 30 X 200 metres on the 0:45.  What this will teach the child is how to run on the front of the foot.  Afterall, you don't want little Johnny to be a heel striker.  No heel striker has ever been a fast runner, ever!  So the sooner you can incorporate this work out the better chance you may have to save your child from failure.

2) Taco Hell Mile Bell:  One way to show junior the benefits of a good diet are to teach him the pains of a terrible diet.  We start this exercise by waking the child up at 5:30 AM and telling them to put on his running stuff because we are going to Disney World.  We then ask if they are hungry, which they are, and stop at Taco Bell.  We make junior eat 17 softshell tacos, or a number near that threshold, and give him coca-cola classic to wash it down.  Within fifteen minutes of the completion of the final taco, we take junior to the local track and tell him that the car doesn't have enough fuel to go to disney world and we'll need for him to generate a sufficient energy supply by running mile repeats.  Since junior will be kind of full, i would reccomend limiting the workout to 14 repeat miles on the 6:40.  This should give him about 1:30 rest betwixt reps.  Now he may have overindulged on the tacos and become very ill.  But do not fret, he will have plenty of time to recover after the workout.  Just make sure you don't head home until the workout ends.  Whenever he complains, tell him that Disney World is just that much further away.  Upon completion, take your kid home to shower (because he will smell of taco bell puke and sweat) and then take him to Disney World... or the car wash, whichever is closer.  Just tell him its disney world.  He'll never know the difference.

3) Enhance:  Make sure at a young age you sprinkle steroids and other performance enhancing drugs into every meal you prepare for your child. This will ensure that he will develop properly and be able to outperform all of his other classmates, the SLOW people.  Plus, as he gets older, he will be able to adapt to the newer and more technologically advanced performance enhancers on the market which will be undetectable by current USATF standards.  Although shipping these enhancers from Malaysia may prove expensive, they will be well worth it in the long run.


Now I must get going on run #2 of the night, which is an easy 5X2X3X3X4X4X20 on the treadmill along with 20 X 200 on the 0:30 on the track.  But i hope all of you, even the SLOW people, enjoy the VD.